


if i go away to the sea

by SlowQuotesQuill



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Relationships, Boys Kissing, Drama & Romance, Festivals, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Mermaid Kageyama Tobio, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Really Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Romance, Supernatural Elements, Tragedy, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24592939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowQuotesQuill/pseuds/SlowQuotesQuill
Summary: "Ningyo. —A creature of the sea, half-human and half-fish… —A creature of myth, whose mere appearance spells a looming misfortune for the human who sees it…"Hinata Shouyou has heard of them, of course, but they were nothing more than the fanciful stories of another era—that is, until that fateful day when one of them washes up, bleeding, on the beach.—And even then, Kageyama Tobio was unexpectedly nothing like how the stories described his kin; nothing more than an unconscious, beautiful boy with a fishtail instead of legs, dying slowly in Hinata's arms.(But of course, the tales ring true.Falling in love with a ningyo brings nothing but the sea.It brings nothing but death.)
Relationships: Hinata Natsu & Hinata Shouyou, Hinata Natsu & Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 49
Kudos: 81





	1. a creature of the sea

One of Hinata Shouyou's clearest memories was that it was just the second month into his first year of high school when the teachers had to shepherd them into the shelters, again. 

The bell had hardly begun ringing to signal the end of Hinata Shouyou's math class when they heard the air raid warning sirens, and the telltale arrival of the bombers.

—Of course, all of the schools in the entire area had been participating in drills regularly over the past year for such an event like this, and they even had to do it for real for almost three or four times, Hinata realized, as he obediently followed the instructions of the class representatives and the teacher to line up and proceed calmly but hurriedly to the nearest shelter, the one that had been built past the street of Ohato.

No one said anything, except to urge the person before them to move more quickly; Hinata, who was bringing up the rear for his class, had to endure the jabbings to his back from an impatient second-year who was leading the class behind them. Slightly incensed, he was about to look over his shoulder to ask (nicely and politely, of course, like they were taught to) the second-year to stop being so pushy, but then—

"Quick! Quick! Hinata-kun! Don't stop to look back!" 

Even as the teacher said that, Hinata Shouyou couldn't help but glance back at the second-year and glare into his haughty face. However, this earned him nothing except for a couple more jabs to the side that made him grunt with pain, and an angry chorus of voices saying, "Hurry up!"

Biting back his embarrassment and the aching of his sides, Hinata spun away from the throng of upperclassmen behind him and concentrated on getting out of here before— 

BOOM. BOOM. 

The ground trembled and shook, and Hinata thought he heard one of the girls in his class, up front somewhere at the beginning of the line, whimper and start to cry. The people around her were shushing her with varying levels of kindness; the teacher was starting to get visibly annoyed with his students' walking pace, which had slackened after the first explosion, and the class representatives all looked slightly harried and anxious. Hinata felt the first stirrings of fear in his chest as well, though he tried his best to swallow back the voice that was threatening to break out of his chest; behind him, the aura of tension enveloping the older students also loomed, heavy and desperate. If they all stay in here one minute longer, they'd all probably— 

_No._ Hinata shook his head. 

_I'm not dying here._

What was _death_ , though, really? His mother told him that his dad had died shortly after she had Natsu, and while Shouyou could vaguely remember his childhood memories of a laughing man, whose unruly hair he recalled every time he looked at the mirror, he couldn't exactly piece together that part of his life and the life he started to have; the life that he can still clearly remember, a life that consisted only of Natsu and Mom and nice neighbors who petted him and called him all sorts of cute nicknames and sometimes gave him sweets, which was admittedly few and far in between since sugar was so dear. He never really found out what Dad died of, too; Mom said he died a hero, and while Hinata never really understood how it was to die a hero (Everyone knows heroes never die in the comics; Can you even call yourself a hero if you do end up dying?), what he did understand that was after death, you wind up as—nothing. 

The thought of nothing scared Hinata more than perhaps the thought of it hurting a lot when a large lump of metal hits you in the face from the sky, and this is what helps him tune out the growing wailing of his classmates around him and to let his feet move him, one calm step at a time, never faltering, never fearing, except at the thought that if he let it end here, there was _nothing_ at the end of it all— 

* * *

"—Nii-chan! Nii-chan! _Wake up!_ " 

Hinata Shouyou woke up with a start, his eyes flying wide open, and he was surprised to discover that when he gently touched his fingers to his eyelashes, they came away slightly damp from something that reminded him vividly of the summer rain. 

_A… dream._

_It's all over. Long over._

_—Just a dream._

"Nii-chan! Breakfast is ready!" 

He grabbed Natsu by the waist, and pushed her gently out of his bed before she threatened to jump up and down on his tummy again. Assuring Natsu that he'd follow her to breakfast after he washes his face, he watched as she reluctantly retreated into the silence of the house and finally left him to enjoy the last minutes of morning coolness—a coolness that will last just before the heat starts to grow during the day. He stretched lazily, taking his time, and carefully wiped his face clean with the basin of water and the towel that Natsu had left behind. 

Breakfast was a relatively talkative affair for the Hinata family of three, even with the radio in the background turned on; over Natsu and his mother's animated discussion over whether the fireflies can now be seen by the river or not, Hinata could catch the first few lines of the familiar song that had started to play. Absently, he started humming along to the solemn, but catchy, tune. 

_"If I go away to the sea, I shall return a—"_

"Shouyou, you have some rice on your chin," his mother suddenly pointed out, and instantly forgetting the rest of the song, Hinata patted his chin until he felt the offending kernel. When he pulled it off and popped it in his mouth, he thought he could see Natsu make a face at him in the corner of his eye. 

"Hey, Mom, I'm going to the beach to play some volleyball later." 

"Shouyou. I keep telling you, if someone catches you playing that kind of thing again—" 

"I'll be careful, Mom! I promise. There's a certain spot hidden behind the beach rocks that no one else knows, cuz it's so well-hidden. Like, I wouldn't even have found it myself if I hadn't practically tripped onto my nose and tumbled _into_ it—" 

"Well, what would you do if some other klutz does the exact same thing and tumbles _into_ it too?" His mother was teasingly mimicking his tone, though undercurrents of worry were still swirling in her voice, and Hinata ended up having to solemnly swear that he would go play with Izumi or Koji at something that looks _and_ seems safer. 

Maybe… maybe card games. Or fishing. God, why did his mother think that volleyball was so _dangerous_ anyway? The worst thing Hinata had ever remembered getting out of it was a nosebleed, but that was when the older kid who taught it to him accidentally served it right into Hinata's face— 

Shaking thoughts of his nostalgic first injury playing his favorite sport, Hinata called up Izumi and Koji on their house phones, respectively, but after receiving some excuse from Izumi about having to cram to lift his dismal grades up for the remedial exam and Koji reminding him that he'd be going away for the weekend to their other residence in Miyagi, Hinata had to hang up the phone, not quite disheartened, though a mischievous plan had started to form in his mind midway through his second rejection. 

"You can't tell Mom about this," he reminded a gaping Natsu as he dug the worn-out volleyball from the depths of his dresser and hid it cleverly within some bathing clothes in a small cloth pouch slung over his shoulder. "You absolutely can't. If she asks, tell her I'm at Izumin's." And when Natsu seemed reluctant, he quickly fished a colorful stick of barley candy he had won from a game and had been meaning to eat after dinner, and put it in his wide-eyed baby sister's palms. "Deal?" 

A small, but perceptible, nod. Hinata patted Natsu's fluffy hair affectionately, bade her goodbye, and scooted out of the house before his mother noticed his escape. 

The sea was within easy biking distance from the Hinata residence; Hinata barely had to feel the ache in his legs start before the familiar sandy stretch of the beach was within his view. He had heard of tales when people used to visit the sea in droves during the summer in the hopes of throwing off the heat, but with the war so far from ending and the threat of bombing still (quite literally) hanging over their heads, the beach was relatively empty most of the time, except for a few people still out catching fish, either to eat or sell. Hinata checked carefully whether the coast was clear before finding the shelf of rock that hid the secret place he had told his mother about earlier, and he shoved his bag in first before crawling into a near-invisible break hidden between two rocks. 

—Past the wall of rock, after paying the cost of gritty, sandy knees and elbows and a certain, almost-crushing claustrophobia that you can only feel if you tried squeezing in between two rocks taller than houses, there existed Hinata's secret place. It was rather like a small, personal cove for one person, surrounded on all sides by rock, and practically invisible on all sides except if one were to perhaps find where the other side of the rocks started and climbed over it. Hinata, who was something of a good climber himself, having fancied playing in trees when he was a toddler and before he became infatuated with the volleyball, had already tried climbing the wall of rock from this side and assured himself that the other side was impossible to climb unless you had the proper equipment—and someone who had bothered to purchase proper equipment wouldn't even think of scaling such a boring-looking wall with it, anyway. 

…Or so Hinata told himself. 

He took his clothes off carefully and folded them away into a safe spot; it wouldn't do to get accidentally splashed by the seawater in them and then go home dripping, so he always had to bring bathing clothes specifically for the beach. Now that his mother was starting to reproach him for thinking about going to the beach for volleyball, he was fairly certain that this measure came in handier than ever. He felt slightly bad for lying, but the voice in his boyish heart was stronger than adult reason at this point, and after changing into swimming trunks, he finally started tossing and bouncing the ball against the walls surrounding the cove. 

—It wasn't until he had spiked the ball into the wall for the fiftieth-or-so time (he had lost count) and his right arm was starting to ache when he finally picked up the sound of a voice, perhaps just a few feet behind him. 

He spun around, alarmed, the ball tumbling out of his grip and rolling safely behind a rock. His heart racing a thousand miles per minute, he glanced around and around for the sign of the person who had somehow found this place today of all days, despite him confidently saying just an hour ago that this place was impenetrable— Maybe it was a fisherman who had decided to brave the treacherous riptide to swim into this spot—or maybe another kid like him, who had crawled into the space to look for a place to play— 

—One swipe of the eyes to the left. 

_No._

—Another swipe of the eyes to the right. 

_Nothing._

Catching his breath, Hinata was about to let out a sigh of relief for what was probably a figment of his overcautious imagination, when, for the second time—

"…nghhh…" 

There it was, again. Hinata realized just what the sound was; it was a pained groan, resounding from beyond some nearby rocks jutting from the shallow water. 

"H, hello?" 

Throwing all of his past caution about wandering fishermen and kids into the wind, Hinata's concern finally overcame his fear and he stepped forward, bare feet silently taking him across the distance he had from the other person— 

"Ah!" 

A gasp, more awed than horrified, escaped his parted lips, and Hinata hastily clapped a hand over them, his cheeks blushing fiercely with embarrassment at the involuntary show of emotion that he made. 

At first glance, the creature resting on the other side of the rocks may just be a teenaged boy. 

His hair was shockingly dark and as fine as silk, adorned with a single, small blue jewel on his forehead and nothing else. His face was easily beautiful—but there was a certain, unearthly quality to his beauty that made the hairs on the back of Hinata's neck stand up uncomfortably. His damp skin was slightly tanned all over, and over his torso was a short kimono made of waterlogged midnight-blue silk, patterned with silvery ripples, and held together by a lighter blue obi. 

Yes, just a boy. 

—But with a second, closer look, Hinata realized that he was… something else entirely. 

He appeared to be human from the waist up, but the rest of him that was submerged in the glittering blue waters suggests otherwise. 

Hinata had to blink, scrub his eyes frantically, and then look again. 

The boy's—no, the _creature's_ body ended in a glimmering fishtail, one that may have seen better days. If asked to describe the fishtail, Hinata would be hard-pressed to name a color, because though it had seemed predominantly pitch-black when in the shadows, the scattered rays of sunlight would occasionally find and play off a scale to reflect a myriad of different colors; glittering red, blue, green, silver, then red again, gold— 

_—Ningyo._

The word flashed in his mind, and startled at his own realization, Hinata drew back with another ragged gasp, a fresh wave of fear gripping his heart. What did Chiyo-baasan in the house at the corner of their street say about the ningyo, again? 

_"—A creature of the sea, half-human and half-fish—"_

True enough, Hinata thought, sucking in a breath. But what else was there? Why were his hands suddenly shaking, as though he had just exposed them in the biting wind of winter instead of the warm summer sea—? Why did he start catching his breath, as if he had run a marathon to get here instead of the few little steps he took from there to here—? Why was he so afraid? _Why?_

And in his mind's eye, Chiyo-baasan continued speaking, her voice sounding as if it were coming from the bottom of a deep well—

_"—A creature of myth, whose mere appearance spells a looming misfortune for the human who sees it..."_

Hinata quickly perceived that he was in a situation that no one he ever knew has probably ever encountered themselves, and instinctively, he dropped on his butt and scooted back, afraid to incur more misfortune than he already probably had just by laying eyes on the ningyo. He had probably gotten about three feet from the creature when he heard it again, the piteous groan, and inside his chest, a sweet kind of pain shot through his treacherously soft heart. 

"N—ngh… nee-san—" 

It took Hinata two raspy gulps of air before realizing that what the ningyo had just said was a word that he recognized. 

_It— no,_ he _has a family, too._

_He's someone's younger brother._

Inexplicably, he thought of Natsu's round eyes when he handed her the barley candy earlier, her happiness with the sticky sweet and her vow of silence to protect his secret, and his lip trembled in a paroxysm of emotion. 

—And all thoughts of his hypothetical impending doom were driven out of his mind as Hinata scrambled back on all fours, wading into the shallow water, to place his palm on the fishtailed boy's forehead. Contrary to what he had expected, the boy's skin was shockingly cold, as though he could not emit any sort of heat at all; figuring out that this was a terribly inaccurate way to find out what was wrong, given that this boy wasn't even human at all, Hinata braced himself, grabbed the boy under the arms, and slowly, slowly, dragged him onto the beach, directly on a weak patch of sunlight. 

Under direct light, the black scales of the boy's tail seemed even more breathtaking—Hinata had to exert effort to suppress his natural human curiosity, stop staring at the otherworldly colors reflecting in the light, and to find out what was wrong, quickly. Rolling up the wide sleeves of the silk kimono, he checked the exposed skin carefully for signs of wounds and was about to move on to other portions of the skin, when he found it. 

The twin puncture wounds seemed to be shallow, though Hinata knew (from a throwaway first-aid lesson during military training) that snakebites like these usually look less dangerous than they actually were. He took a deep breath, willing his trembling fingers to stay still, and carefully placed his lips over the wound to gently suck the venom out. 

The bitter taste of the venom on his tongue was a surprise, making him instinctively turn away and spit it onto the sand, but he quickly replaced his mouth on the bite and did it again, and again. Each time, less venom leaked from the wound, and when he could no longer taste anything but the surprising sweetness of the ningyo's blood, he finally relaxed, and quickly ripped a piece off the clothes that he brought to use as a bandage. 

He was just about to rise and rinse the blood out of his mouth with the salt water, when the ningyo suddenly coughed harshly—once and twice and thrice—and he froze on the spot, afraid that this was finally his last day on earth. Strangely enough, however, unlike the bombing from the other week, he felt strangely calm about it. His mind was frustratingly blank, as if his body actually thought that to be killed by the cool fingers now irresistibly wrapping around his wrist was much, much better than anything else— 

_I wonder if his kind eats humans._

Chiyo-baasan hasn't really mentioned anything about that, though, Hinata helplessly thought, though perhaps he wouldn't know if what she knew was just not complete. Meanwhile, the ningyo's hand around his wrist was like a vice, and Hinata, with his back turned to the creature, finally heard the deep voice, uncoiled from its tight suffering moments ago, as it welled from the boy's throat, strangely melodic and melancholic at the same time— 

"—Oi. Human." 

"Eek! I— I don't taste good!" The squeak was already out of his mouth before he caught himself; flushing a deeper shade of scarlet at his display of cowardice, he sat back on his heels, still resolutely turning away from the creature, lest he find out that the well-shaped mouth actually held rows of razor-sharp teeth within— 

"—What?" A highly incredulous tone from the ningyo, and unbelievably, he started to chuckle, and then to burst out in a full-on guffaw. His laughter had such a strong feeling of mocking in it that Hinata couldn't help but face the ningyo to ask why the hell he was laughing at him— 

_Oh._

The angry retort died in his throat before he even got the chance to say it; like this, awake and breathless with laughter and squeezing his teary eyes shut, the ningyo looked, if possible, even more unbelievably— 

"Pretty." 

Only when the ningyo ceased his laughter abruptly and opened his startlingly-dark eyes to stare—or _glare_ , actually—at him did Hinata realize that he had said those words out loud. 

The ningyo smiled widely—a rather malicious sort of grin, Hinata decided, his terror ebbing back into his chest, but then he noticed another thing that helped calm him down. Normal teeth, peeking from the boy's lips. It wasn't a reliable sort of indication to find out if he _did_ eat humans or not, but at least he can't possibly just start chomping down on Hinata's arm or something— 

"I wonder, are all humans as dumb as you are?" 

It took a while before Hinata's brain finally processed the question. 

"W, what'd you just say, you— you ungrateful _jerk_?! After I saved your life?!" 

"Seriously. Nee-san keeps on saying that humans eat us for sport, but that can't be right. Especially if they're like this dumbass." 

He wasn't even speaking directly to Hinata anymore; his beautiful eyes had narrowed slightly, and his brows were in a terrible scowl. 

"Oi, human. I bet you haven't even hunted one single thing in your entire life, right? Your hands are"—as if to prove his point, he laced his fingers through Hinata's, making his blush return to his cheeks full-force—"too soft." 

"Shut up! I—I do know how to fish with just my hands," Hinata sputtered, though not very convincingly. 

"Oh, really now?" The ningyo's eyes were flashing competitively. "Sure. How many have you caught already, if you're such a fine fisherman?" 

"N— Twenty last week," Hinata said, and the ningyo looked less than unimpressed. "Hey! Stop that pitying look; that's ten more than Izumin and Koji together!" 

"That's stupid," the ningyo was muttering, but then he said, "And how fast can you swim?" 

"I don't know," Hinata answered, honestly, then puffed his chest and declared, "but the teacher says that I'm in the top ten for my class, so there." 

"Right." The ningyo released him so abruptly that Hinata lost his balance, and fell sideways on the sand. "Thanks for proving my point." 

"What point?" 

"That I'm _loads_ better than you are." That smug look on the ningyo's face was driving Hinata nuts; meanwhile, the ningyo had started dragging himself back into the water, apparently disinterested already. "Bye. See you around." 

"Oi!" 

The ningyo turned back at Hinata's yell, an extremely bored look on his face. "What?" 

"I, I," Hinata flailed, and then blurted, "I challenge you!" 

"What?" The ningyo was staring at him as if Hinata had suddenly just grown a fishtail of his own. 

"I bet you can't catch more fish than I do in two minutes!" 

The ningyo was glaring daggers at him; Hinata was mentally telling himself, _Hook… line…_

"You're on, dumbass." Snarling. "I'm going to fucking wipe the seafloor with you." 

_—Sinker._

It was almost sadly comical, Hinata would think several times after this first meeting, how quickly the ningyo bristled at the merest idea that some bastard thought they were better than him at something. 

"Let's make a bet," Hinata said, spurred on by the feeling. 

"What?" 

"If I win—" Hinata swallowed nervously. "Tell me your name." 

"Done." A flash of teeth, bared in a grin so evil that it was almost ridiculous on those features. "If I win— No, _when_ I win"—it was Hinata's turn to bristle—"you'll have to do whatever I tell you. Is that fine?" 

Hinata felt dubious, but he said, "O, okay." 

"Heh." The ningyo glanced at the sun, which was already hanging low in the sky, and pointed at it. "Then let's meet the next time the sun sinks like this." 

"Okay." 

The ningyo stared at him, as though wanting to say something else, but then he seemed to think better of it, and with a flick of his beautiful tail and a splash, Hinata blinked—and he was gone. 

—Only after then did Hinata realize that in his mouth, there was still the very slight aftertaste of ningyo blood, and with a slight, disconcerted crease between his brows, he ducked his head and started to dress for the way back home. 


	2. the first one to drop

Hinata Shouyou closed his eyes, and the world turned into nothing but the sound of the waves, and the taste of salt water, and the sensation of the sun on his bare torso. 

He opened his mouth slightly and took his time in breathing, like the instructor told them to do regularly, purportedly to improve both composure and circulation: breathe in, count to three, breathe out. Breathe in, count to three, breathe out. Breathe in, count to three, breathe out— 

When he finally heard the telltale splash of the ningyo's head breaking through the surface of the water, he only smiled, and continued to sunbathe idly. He was half-afraid that the ningyo would start yelling at him to wake up, or to throw stones at him until he got up, but when a few more minutes passed and nothing happened, Hinata assumed that the ningyo thought he was sleeping soundly and probably decided to just wait around for him to stir. 

Which was quite considerate of him, if that were the case, Hinata thought, a flicker of curiosity making his damp eyelids flutter, but not enough to convince him to get up from his comfortable position on the sand. He felt slightly winded; he had been playing for an hour before the time that the ningyo had named, and did a little swimming and volleyball during that, before finally dropping on the sand to start his sunbathing. Drowsily, he spread his arms to try encompassing the stretches of sand around him, his fingers reaching to their utmost. Let the ningyo wait, he thought, a little mischievously. The feeling of the sun and sea on his body were, at this point, far more inviting. 

He could clearly hear the ningyo finally swim to shore, and then the heavy dragging sound of his tail across the sand. It still puzzled and mystified him to no end, the colors of that tail. Hinata, even as his eyes remained closed, could still picture each individual scale on that fishtail as they reflected the sunlight back with a different color: red, blue, green, silver, then red again, gold… 

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

—His daydreams suddenly splintered apart when he felt cold droplets hit his cheek, and slide down slowly along his jaw. 

"Gwaahhhhhh!" 

Yelping involuntarily, Hinata's eyes couldn't help but fly open and stare helplessly up into a sky that was suddenly not there, as a familiarly icy hand grabbed his flailing wrist and held it in place. 

"Oh. I thought you were dead." 

The other boy's face was hovering just mere inches from his own, sharp dark eyes boring into round brown ones, and for a while, Hinata could only blink and watch, enchanted, as one by one, more glittering drops of water softly and gently trembled on the tips of the ningyo's black hair, before finally falling and rolling down on Hinata's cheek. In this proximity, he could almost count the eyelashes framing those deep eyes; Hinata was again struck by just how inhuman this boy seemed, even though he basically possessed all the basic parts of a human body—the upper half, that is. 

Which reminded him, rather uncomfortably, that the rough, heavy, slimy thing pressing down across his legs right now was probably actually the ningyo's fishtail. 

"Get off me," he said—he meant it to sound irritable, but it came out as more of a breathy whisper instead. The ningyo smiled, smugly, pearl-white teeth exposed in the merest flash of a second before being hidden yet again, and obligingly pulled himself off the human boy's body. 

Hinata sat up, momentarily blinded by the sunlight that was now unhindered by the ningyo's shadow, and glanced at his unusual companion. The ningyo was again wearing a short-sleeved kimono over his human half, but this time it was a soft-looking black silk that stuck damply to the skin and was patterned all over the hem with sea stars embroidered in fine gold. On his forehead, a small yellow diamond glistened, catching the sunlight prettily every time the ningyo turned his head. 

Hinata forced himself not to gawk at the enormous jet-black fishtail protruding from where the robe ended, but every so often it would sparkle whenever it caught the light; turquoise and purple and silver and orange, and almost like a cat, Hinata couldn't help but follow the trail of sunbeams as they played along the lovely fish scales. If the ningyo noticed him staring, he probably did not care enough to call him out on it, or perhaps to stare at someone was probably not a rude thing to do for his kind. Hinata could only guess. 

"—Oi. Let's start, dumbass. I haven't got all day." 

"Okay," Hinata replied absently, before realizing what the ningyo meant by _start_ and yelling "Hey!" when the ningyo reached water first and disappeared beneath the gentle waves in the blink of an eye. His body reacting faster than his mind could think, however, Hinata sprinted after the creature, and recklessly dived after him. 

The crash of the sea foam blinded him momentarily—and then, the world as he knew it disappeared in favor of another world under the waves, one where the distorted sunlight reached down lazily, as though reluctant to be where it wasn't supposed to be, and puny, colorful fish brushed past Hinata's leg, entirely unafraid of the unfamiliar creature who had so unceremoniously appeared in their midst. Through the aqua gloom, he could make out the dark shape of the ningyo up ahead, just some feet away, and doggedly, Hinata kicked his feet and struck out with his arms, propelling himself forward as bubbles slowly escaped from his clamped mouth. 

If the ningyo looked otherworldly on land, it was nowhere near how he looked underwater. 

Ghostly, his skin was so ghostly in the turquoise light. His fine black hair fanned out behind him as he dived, his hands gentle and sure as he deftly caught a passing anemonefish and harmlessly locked it away with two others already swimming in a pouch-shaped net that was dangling at his waist. The sleeves of his kimono almost looked like black wings as they streamed after him. Without the sunlight, Hinata noted that the ningyo's tail was a deep black, though when underwater it also seemed to throw off an almost metallic blue sheen that made his blood run cold. Hinata watched in awe, forgetting why he dived in for a moment, before catching himself and quickly nabbing an innocently curious goby that had brushed against the back of his hand. 

They emerged from water approximately two minutes later, Hinata coughing out the water that he had accidentally inhaled, the ningyo shooting him unreadable glances as they ensconced themselves in shallower water to count their haul in peace. Carefully, with their nets still submerged in water so as not to accidentally kill the fish, they started letting them go, one by one, both of them jealously keeping count so as to ensure that everything was proceeding fairly, and when Hinata finally finished his catch off with ten and the ningyo with twenty-one, he couldn't almost bring himself to raise his eyes to meet the other's delighted smirk. 

"Told you, I'd win." 

"—Ugh." Hinata scratched the back of his head resignedly, droplets flying off his vibrant hair as he did so. "Fine. What do I have to do?" 

The ningyo stared thoughtfully at him, the smirk fading, and it was only when Hinata prodded him, slightly miffed, that he finally jerked a thumb at the bag half-hidden behind a huge rock and muttered, with a slightly pink blush, "Show me what you brought with you." 

Taken aback by the strange request (though a small part of his heart also felt lighter now that the ningyo didn't make him do anything stupid), Hinata obediently took the cloth bag from its hiding place and brought it over to where the ningyo was sunning himself. "Are you quite sure this is what you wanted?" Hinata queried curiously, as he paused from opening the bag. 

In response, the ningyo scowled, and flushed even deeper. "I already told you what I want, you stupid dumbass, so stop dawdling and show me already!" 

"So bossy," Hinata said mournfully, though he followed the other's instructions and took out the items anyway. The first was the volleyball, of course, which he placed in the ningyo's hands obligingly. The boy turned it this way and that, curiously, though perhaps not really understanding its purpose, as he seemed to get bored of it fairly quickly and handed it back. 

"Next," Hinata said, and he took out a pocketwatch and handed it over. "That's to tell time." 

"What time?" 

"Um. Well." Hinata scratched his head, puzzled about how to explain something that he just… _knew_. "I guess it's how to tell how long you have to wait for anything… or something." 

The ningyo seemed as confused as Hinata probably looked, and when he discovered that the crown can be winded, the sound of it clicking must be pleasing to his ears, because he was still winding it up when Hinata finally brought out the clothes buried in the bottom of the bag. 

"Er, these are my change of clothes. I guess." 

"Uh huh." It was a little embarrassing to watch such an attractive creature dig eagerly through his personal effects like a kid, Hinata decided, as the ningyo went straight for his hakama and held it out delicately in his hands. 

"For your puny human legs, I presume," he said, with something like childish pride in his sparkling eyes at having figured something out. Hinata bit back at a smile at this unexpected expression from the ningyo, and just nodded his assent. 

Wonderingly, the ningyo remarked, "—Look how _short_ these are. It's amazing." 

"Well, I'm sorry for being so short, you big… long… mean… fish… _thingy_." 

"What are you getting so mad for? It's true."—chortling. 

"Besides," Hinata grumbled in annoyance, as the ningyo impudently began measuring the hakama against the length of his tail (the hem of his hakama barely reached the ningyo's peduncle, much to Hinata's consternation), "even if I'm short—I can _jump_." 

A curious sideways glance. 

"Show me." 

Hinata was about to stupidly obey, when he realized something and stopped; the ningyo watched him freeze in a funny half-squat, his eyes blinking hard. He then plopped back down resolutely. 

"No." 

"What'd you just _say_ , bastard?" The ningyo's hand shot out and gripped him hard on the top of his head, hard, and Hinata yelped. 

"No!" 

"I'll _make_ you, you sh—" 

"Beat me first!" Hinata was yelling, and he felt the painful grip in his hair loosen somewhat in surprise. 

"What are you on about?" 

"Let's have another match," Hinata spluttered, his earlier confidence slowly eroding under the unsettling intensity of the other's glare. "If you win this time—I'll jump _all_ you want." 

"Fine, stupid." A nerve was twitching in his temple, Hinata was pleased to notice. "I'll beat you in anything, so you better start begging me for your life."

"Really? In _anything_?" 

"Don't make me repeat myself, dumbass." 

"Then, beat me in this." Hinata picked up the volleyball that was abandoned on the side, and brushed off the sand that had stuck to the bottom. "Volleyball!" 

The ningyo's adorably honest face told him in an instant that he had no damn clue as to how to compete using the ball, and Hinata grinned. 

"—It's simple. We toss it back and forth, and the first one to drop it loses. Easy." 

The ningyo's eyes were so narrowed, they were practically slits. "Fine. Bring it on." 

They positioned themselves awkwardly; since Hinata can't possibly picture the ningyo being able to catch up on land with his appendages, he had to stand to the sea as close as possible, the waves washing over his feet every so often as he held the ball in his hands. The ningyo drifted lazily to his position, curious, and Hinata started demonstrating how to properly receive a volleyball. 

"So when you see the ball falling toward you, like so—" He tossed the ball upward, and stretched his arms out in a straight platform to receive it neatly. "You should make it bounce back to your opponent like _shoop_." 

"Do I really have to hit the ball back like that?" the ningyo asked dubiously. 

"Well, people usually do it underhand, but I guess it'd be easier for you to toss it overhand." Hinata tossed the ball again, and stretched his hands up to receive it on the tips of his fingers. "Like _pon_." 

"Okay." 

"Also," Hinata said, "If I win, you have to tell me your name." 

"Done. —Now shut up and let's start _already_." 

To Hinata's slight annoyance, the ningyo proved to be much more adept at this than he seemed at first—and it was getting more apparent by the second that instead of being a handicap, him being in the water was actually much more conducive to moving around freely. Thank God he was in no position to make spikes or anything of the sort, Hinata was thinking as he received a particularly difficult ball that was tossed up _way_ too high. 

They kept up the rally for fifteen straight minutes, the both of them seemingly never tiring, the back-and-forth sounds of the ball making contact with flesh strangely therapeutic. Hinata had just received the ball yet again and sent it over to the ningyo, when— 

BOOM. 

The distant explosion made his head swivel instantly to the direction of the town, though with the wall of rock in his line of sight, he couldn't actually see anything—just barely, he could hear the splash of the ball hitting water instead of skin, and dimly registered that the ningyo must have been distracted enough by the sound as well to let the ball drop. However, instead of the victory that he anticipated to feel, what was in his stomach was a lingering sense of dread. 

"I… I should go." 

The ningyo seemed to have reached the same conclusion, as he glumly brought the dripping ball back to shore. "What was _that_?" 

"I don't know." But even as he started stripping his swimming garments and pulling on his spare clothes, Hinata heard another BOOM, and suddenly his shaking fingers almost couldn't properly tie the belt around his waist properly. "Sorry. Let's play another time." 

"It's fine." 

"Seriously." Hinata looked over his shoulder at the melancholic figure of the ningyo with an apologetic face, but the dark eyes that looked back at him did not seem reproachful at all. "I'll come back again. Okay?" 

"—Just get back home, dumbass. Stop running your mouth." 

"Okay. Thanks." 

Finally shoving all of his things into the bag, he was about to squeeze into the familiar space between the rocks when he heard a small voice say, "…Kageyama."

"Sorry?" He looked back, and surprisingly, there was a faint trace of pink across the ningyo's cheeks. 

"My name is Kageyama Tobio." He huffed. "Now, get home, dumbass." 

* * *

—The world above the water was composed of nothing but ash, and smoke. 

This was what Hinata Shouyou regularly discovered and rediscovered during the sixteenth year of his life as he biked furiously back home and found that the impact points of the two explosions were much further than he had anticipated. His house, thankfully, was well out of the way, though it made his blood freeze in his veins to think what would have happened had the explosion been nearer and the house had been caught in the blast— 

"Shouyou!" his mother was screaming at him as he finally burst into the kitchen. "Where were you!" 

"Out playing," he was babbling, but his mother was already on the move; she thrust a trembling Natsu in his arms and grabbed a bag that they had packed exclusively for emergencies like this. Pulling a stunned Hinata out of the house, they quickly headed to the nearest shelter, which was just past Meganebashi. Mother and son neither cried nor spoke a word, because to take the time to emit a sound meant death. 

The streets were devoid of people; Hinata was not sure if it was because they had already reached the shelters or if they had hidden someplace else entirely. The two smoke trails marring his view of the blue sky told him that the explosion was further inland, perhaps even in the next town over; but that could also mean that the next bomb to drop would hit them instead. He couldn't hear the planes at this distance—which was a relief, because to hear them meant death.

Natsu was still trembling in his arms—impulsively, he squeezed his arms protectively around her and kissed the round cheek, which earned him a whimper and the tightening of chubby arms around his neck. "It's fine, we'll be fine," he kept murmuring, over and over, because Natsu needed to hear him say it and he needed to hear him say it to himself. He almost stumbled once but was able to right himself, though his sandal ended up breaking off and was lost forever in the confusion. He didn't stop to think about it. He just ran, one foot bare against the hot stones, because to stay still meant death. 

(When they were finally admitted into the shelter and the huge steel doors closed securely behind them, he took a shaky breath and sank to his knees, Natsu's comforting warmth pressed against him—and reminding him again just how much he feared the unknown.) 

—But in the end, this was normal life, and life had to go on normally even after the planes went away. 

"I'm sending you two away to Karumai," his mother said one evening, a week later, as they sat down to dinner. Natsu, who was already eating, was placidly indifferent to the announcement, but Hinata could feel a shard of ice pierce his heart at the news. 

"Why?" he asked, his mouth dry, and his mother smiled sadly at his confusion. 

"Your father and I used to live with his parents in Karumai at his ancestral home," was the answer. "You'll be safer with your grandparents. No one will ever bother attacking a poor town in the mountains; it's too remote." 

"Why not _you_ , too?" Hinata amended his question, and his mother paused before taking a bite of fish. 

"Our memories are too fresh," she answered, and while to her this reason made perfect sense, Hinata was perhaps sadly still too young, and still too inexperienced, to understand the meaning of those words. "The preparations are in place, but it might take around weeks before we can finally take you there. Hopefully, before August ends—you'll finally be there." 

Numbly, Hinata can only nod at this. 

"—Where's Karumai?" 

Kageyama Tobio asked him this question idly, one afternoon when they were lounging around in the beach, both panting from exertion. Ever since Hinata had lost miserably in fishing and won accidentally at volleyball, they had been throwing challenges at each other back and forth. So far, Hinata has only had the one win from that first volleyball match, even after succeeding rematches; the ningyo seemed stupidly dedicated to proving that the loss was a fluke on Hinata's part, as he had increasingly improved his receives. Which should have been totally ridiculous, because he was also playing in water, and yet the way he moved beneath the surface of the sea, here and there in a blink of an eye, actually helped him win those matches as well. 

"I did bring a map, though I'm not sure if it'll mean anything to you." Hinata spread the map on a dry patch of sand, and let Kageyama run his dark eyes appraisingly on it before he fixed those same eyes on Hinata inquisitively. Hinata pointed Karumai out on the map, a town that was hopelessly landlocked between mountains and other small cities, and smiled sadly. "If I move there, we'd never get to see each other again, huh?" 

"Probably." Kageyama seemed thoughtful as he scratched his chin. Today, he was clothed in a summery lilac kimono that was so light it was almost white, embroidered all over with small sea fern patterns in deep purple thread, and his forehead was adorned with a small piece of amethyst. "What are those cities around it called?" 

Hinata obligingly read them out to him, and Kageyama nodded attentively at each one. While the ningyo was extremely short-tempered, Hinata had quickly discovered that Kageyama's mood was at its most agreeable whenever he was learning something new—an odd, if effective, motivation to bring interesting things every time he visited the secret beach. "See? It's a long way away from the sea, and way far up north," Hinata ended the quick geography lesson by reiterating, and Kageyama frowned. 

"I see. So where are we right now?" 

"Here," and Hinata's finger drifted southward to point at the town's location on the map. 

"Eh, seems like a short distance to me." 

"Don't be stupid. This map is scaled down, see? You'll have to imagine that if you measure this point and that point with a finger's width, it corresponds to meters and meters…" 

"Near or far, it's all the same." Kageyama's tone was matter-of-fact. "Before I migrated here, I was living in the colder seas way up north, you know." 

"Really?" 

"Yeah, but then that last winter got really bad, and the fish were really scarce—so we sought somewhere warmer and found ourselves here." 

" _We_." Hinata remembered the single word that fell from Kageyama's feeble lips during that first time—the word that had so moved him to save this grumpy, pretty, boy-creature. "Do you have a sister, Kageyama?" 

"How'd you—?" Kageyama spluttered, suspicious, and Hinata waved his hands quickly to show that he was entirely innocent. 

"I heard you calling out for her in your sleep. When I saved you that time." 

"Oh." Rather shamefacedly, Kageyama's fingers started to play with a frayed thread on the sleeve of his kimono. "Yeah. I have a sister. She… she's older than me." 

"Cool. I have a sister, too! But she's younger than me. Her name's Natsu, cuz she was born in the summer too, like me." Eyes lighting up like they always did when Natsu was mentioned, Hinata leaned forward with an extremely fond look on his face, and Kageyama watched him, slightly entranced despite himself. "Even though she's starting to get bigger, she still sometimes creeps into my room to sleep beside me when she can't sleep, so Mom made me keep another futon in my closet for her to sleep in. Which is quite often, actually, during stormy nights…" 

"Hmm. I see." Kageyama had stopped worrying at his sleeve, and turned his head to look at Hinata once more. His gaze was distant, however, as though he was looking at something that was far beyond what he was actually seeing. Hinata couldn't help but feel strangely melancholic at the sight. "So is that why you saved me back then? Because I reminded you of your sister?" 

It was Hinata's turn to flush pink. "That's a part of it," Hinata admitted, quietly. "But, also, I think I couldn't bear wondering about what your sister would feel if you didn't make it back home. You know?" 

"I see," Kageyama repeated, turning to look at the sea once more. 

His voice was infinitely gentler than it usually was, making Hinata's heart tremble painfully, softly. 

For a while, nobody spoke. The crashing of the waves on the rocks filled in the silence; the golden rays of sunlight were starting to cast rosy streaks over the sky. Overhead, Hinata saw in the corner of his eye a flock of seagulls flying and noisily chattering at each other. The infinite blue of the seawater stretched before and beyond the two of them, and the wind was starting to become slightly stiffer and cooler. 

—Once again, the day was almost at an end. 

"We should go," Hinata found himself saying, and Kageyama blinked and looked over his shoulder at him. "Mom is going to kill me if I stay out any later. She's starting to become paranoid enough as it is."

Kageyama smiled crookedly. "Okay. Tomorrow?" 

"Yep." Hinata found himself smiling, despite himself. "See you later, Kageyama." 

"See you later, dumbass Hinata."

And with those parting words, Kageyama Tobio went out to sea, and disappeared once more into the cresting waves with a graceful flick of his tail. 


	3. birthday present

Roughly four weeks before the Hinata siblings' planned evacuation to Karumai, and just as the summer was starting to show off its brilliant colors and heat, was when Natsu finally celebrated her birthday. 

They had a simple party in the dining room, with just the three of them working in simple harmony to achieve the best results despite the circumstances—their mother, who spared no effort in making do with what available food they had, Hinata Shouyou, who livened up the house with all kinds of decorations and general merriment, and Natsu herself, who was old enough to understand that all this fuss was dedicated for her, though not understanding why exactly a birthday should be so special compared to other days, yet enjoying everything all the same. 

The fare was simple, but the music was good and the parlor games were novel and fun. While Shouyou was normally the hugest sore loser this side of the empire (something Koji had once mentioned in passing and had somehow stuck), today he intentionally let Natsu win more games than he did, the growing pile of prizes in the cute pink hand-knit bag that Mom gave her a testament to his big-brotherly selflessness. 

"Mom, can we go play on the beach today?" he asked meekly as Natsu finally seemed to grow tired of the games; she perked up at the mention of the beach, her eyes wide and glowing. "Natsu said she wanted to go sometime, and we'll be back very soon. Is that fine?" 

Their mother looked rightfully dubious, but when Natsu and Shouyou swore up and down to come home the moment the first air raid warning resounded through the town, she finally let them go with a stern reminder to not be gone for longer than an hour. 

The weather was extremely hot, but lovely; Hinata half-wished he had asked for more money to buy a cone of strawberry kakigori each for both himself and Natsu when he saw the vendor crying out their wares on the beach. Since he had enough for one small cone, he did buy one for Natsu, as it was her day today; she accepted the treat with a delighted face, and proceeded to eat through the ice rather messily until her mouth was covered in pink syrup. Hinata had to pause and laugh at his baby sister, first, before obligingly wiping away the mess with the towel that he had brought for such emergencies. 

They spent most of their allotted time just playing with the waves and building misshapen sand castles that crumbled down with the merest touch of a finger, and periodically, Hinata found his eyes wandering at that certain shelf of rock on the other end of the beach, which he knew hid his secret cove from view. He wondered if Kageyama's kind also celebrated such mundane things as birthdays; or perhaps, if he was there, even, maybe enjoying the sun and sand without a pesky Hinata to challenge to stupid games. That last thought irritated him, slightly, and when Natsu finally threw her arms up tiredly and announced that she wanted to go home, he couldn't help but say— 

"Hey. Nii-chan has another present for you before we leave. Would you like that?" 

"Ookay," the child answered back, though without much conviction, and Hinata threw his chest out with a mighty huff. 

"You just thought I can't give you a super awesome present, didn't you? I'll make you apologize to me for that! Hey, here, let's go while those old guys aren't looking." 

Puzzled, Natsu let herself be scooped up and carried without question, her eyes carefully staring at the wall of rock on the end of the beach as they drew near it. Hinata put her down, pointed at the secret space between the rocks, and instructed her, "Crawl through there." 

"Where?" She peered carefully, her childish gaze not comprehending, and Hinata patiently guided her hand to feel along the rock until it went inside the invisible break. Natsu gaped at this, and Hinata grinned. 

"—By the way. This is a secret, okay? Don't tell Mom or anyone about this. No one should know except you and me." 

"—Okay!" Natsu's round face was shining at the prospect of being entrusted with such an important matter, and she obediently squeezed through the crevice. "Don't mind the dark, just concentrate on the light on the other side and go on," Hinata reassured her when she seemed reluctant to go on, and he followed her in when she finally pushed through. 

—On the other side of this daunting wall of rock was, of course, Hinata's other world. 

The ningyo Kageyama Tobio wasn't there, a fact which strangely brought a huge sense of relief and disappointment in his chest at the same time. Natsu skipped around, awed at the towering rock walls that secluded this place from outsiders, and glanced back at her brother. "It's like a room!" she decided, "a room without any roof or windows!" 

"A room with a view of the ocean," Hinata agreed. "Hey, can you hear the seagulls from here?" 

Natsu nodded eagerly and silently watched the ocean, her wide eyes reflecting the infinite blue, and Hinata idly collected more seashells to add to her already-bulging sleeves. He was about to propose going back, when Natsu suddenly tilted her head and frowned at a nearby group of rocks off the coast. 

"Nii-chan, is that a shark?" She sounded mildly interested, rather than fearful or shocked, and Hinata slowly turned his head to follow her pointing finger, half-hopeful that the "shark" wasn't who he thought it was— 

"AH!" 

Kageyama Tobio's dark head jerked visibly from behind the rocks, but made no move to get out of his hiding place—perhaps hoping that both humans would just let it slide and go away. However, Hinata, whose stomach was already swooping uncomfortably with slight embarrassment and pity for his friend, was already marching over to drag the offender from the water. 

"Oi, Kageyama!" he hissed. "Come out of there!" 

"What?" Kageyama hissed back, irritably. Today, he was clad in an exquisite azure kimono with wave patterns in white and gray; it was almost the exact shade of the seawater. A small sapphire graced his brow. "Oi!" he grumbled when Hinata grabbed him by the arm, and attempted to drag him to land. "Don't let her see me, you  _ idiot— _ "

"She's already  _ seen _ you, you're not exactly the best at not standing out—" 

"Stop it, I'm telling you! This is bad enough already—" 

The two boys continued to struggle and flail rather humorously, Hinata trying to grab whatever inch of Kageyama he could, while Kageyama was doing the exact opposite to try and push him off. Natsu was just standing in the distance, her mouth a little open at the strange spectacle, and when Kageyama finally succeeded in unbalancing Hinata and sent him tumbling away on the sand, Natsu finally ran forward and cried, "Stop bullying Nii-chan, you meanie!" 

Kageyama and Hinata both glanced at her in mutual surprise; Natsu had determinedly put herself between her brother and the perceived threat, looking as though she had just grown a couple inches as she pushed her chin up and repeated, "Stop bullying Nii-chan!" 

Kageyama, still half-hiding behind the rocks, blinked at Natsu as though he had never quite seen a creature like her; meanwhile, Hinata, who had finally caught up with the situation, had thrown his head back and started laughing uncontrollably, the giggles making his whole body shake and fall over once more as he struggled to regain his balance. "It's okay, Natsu," he gasped as the fit finally died down, his cheeks hurting from smiling too much. Kageyama was still frozen in place, dark eyes staring down into Natsu's frowning baby face, and Hinata felt as though he had just won a thousand victories over the ningyo just by being able to witness this sight. "It's fine. He's my friend." 

"Your friend?" Natsu squinted at Kageyama; in response, the ningyo flinched badly, as though he had just been struck on the head by something blunt. 

"Yep. He's my friend," Hinata repeated easily, and grinned at the skulking Kageyama. "Come on out, Kageyama. My sister wants to see you." 

"No." 

"Stop being such a baby." 

"I'm not!" 

"Yes you are!" 

"Am not!" 

"Are so!" 

Determinedly, they locked glares and stared each other down—Natsu was glancing between the two of them, slightly bemused. Hinata's eyes were starting to water terribly, but he held on, and when Kageyama finally broke away with a tiny sigh of supreme annoyance, he almost couldn't help but whoop that he won that round (though, the thought that Kageyama would probably kill him next time for that quickly weaned him off the idea of bragging about it). 

"Fine," he said, then glared at Natsu. "As for the gremlin over there, don't scream when you see all of me, or I'll pluck the eyes out of your head." 

"Don't call my sister a gremlin!" 

"Shut up, you dumbass brother of the gremlin!" 

They both broke off, breathing hard, their childish argument simmering under their twitching expressions. 

"Don't yell," Kageyama reiterated to Natsu, who nodded dumbly, and slowly and grudgingly, he started pulling himself onto shore, his cumbersome black tail leaving a wide track as it dragged across damp sand. 

—Despite having seen it himself for more times than he can count on his hands, Hinata still cannot help but be drawn to the moving sight of the light playing on Kageyama's scales. Beside him, Natsu seemed equally entranced as well, her small mouth in a comical "O" as she stared, her hands trembling at her sides as she struggled to express the emotion that her limited vocabulary cannot quite express. 

Kageyama Tobio, now exposed in his entirety, just fidgeted and blushed furiously under their gaze—which Hinata found outrageously, unbelievably, undeniably adorable. 

"W-What are you staring at?" he snapped at Natsu, who was slightly taken aback at the outburst—though as Hinata prepared to snap back at Kageyama for her sake, she bit her lip and stepped bravely forward. "Whatever you're doing, stop. I'm warning you. Oi—" 

"Shark!" 

—And before Hinata could even react, Natsu had already flung her arms around the surprised Kageyama's shoulders, and given him a bear-hug. 

"Ah." Kageyama. 

"Ah." Hinata. 

"AAH!" they both yelled at the same time. 

" _ Natsuuuuu! _ " 

"Get off me!" 

"Shaaark!" 

Hinata hastily disentangled his sister from Kageyama—Natsu had a wide grin that made her look as if her cheeks had swallowed her eyes, while Kageyama was wearing a look of absolute horror on his face. 

"You can't just cling to a strange guy like that!" Hinata was sternly telling Natsu, who was chewing on her finger and still staring at the ningyo with huge glittering eyes. "One day you could, but don't marry yourself off yet or Nii-chan will be very sad—" 

"Oi!" Kageyama was fuming at the same time in the background. "Tie your gremlin sister up or something! That was dangerous!" 

"I told you, stop calling my sister a gremlin!" 

"Shark!" Natsu repeated, quite clearly, and she pointed at Kageyama. 

"Er, no," Hinata said feebly. "That's not…" 

"I dare you to call me a shark one more time," Kageyama snarled. "I'll feed you to one!" 

"Kageyama, stop making death threats like that with a straight face!" Hinata turned to Natsu. "And he's not a shark, Natsu. His name is Kageyama Tobio." 

"To…?" the child tried echoing. "Tobiuo?" 

"Right!" Hinata nodded vigorously—behind him, Kageyama was yelling exasperatedly, "My name is  _ Tobio _ , dumbass!" 

"Tobio," Natsu tried pronouncing it again, looking at Kageyama for approval. The ningyo frowned, then turned his gaze away. 

"Right," he grunted back, resigned. 

Hinata beamed back and forth between Natsu and Kageyama, his heart soaring impossibly high. 

They had to leave shortly after that, however, or they might get in trouble—but Kageyama had perked up considerably when Hinata mentioned that it was his sister's birthday today. "Remembering a birthday is an incredibly important thing, even among ningyo," he said, surprisingly earnest, and beckoned Natsu over to give her a present of his own. However, it seemed to be so tiny that Hinata couldn't see it even after he handed it over. "Don't show it to anyone else before you use it, Natsu," Kageyama reminded her, "especially not to your dumbass brother, or it'll never work." 

"What is it?" Hinata was whining, but Natsu pocketed Kageyama's present in her bag resolutely. 

"No peeking!" Natsu scolded him cheekily. 

Kageyama smirked at Hinata. "She's quite right, you know. Besides, don't worry. It's nothing dangerous." 

"I'd be a lot more worried since it came from you," Hinata was grumbling, but then Natsu grabbed his hand and smiled up at him, and he felt his heart soften and relent at that serenely contented look on her face. 

"We're going, Kageyama," he said. "But I'll see you later. Promise." 

"Okay. See you." 

Kageyama saw them off with a wave, his expression strangely wistful. 

"Tobio is very kind, isn't he, Nii-chan?" Natsu whispered confidentially as they finally reached the outside world, where seemingly nothing has changed. The old men fishing on the shore were still there, and the last of the sand castles that they had built earlier were finally being washed away by the sea. 

"He could be, I guess," Hinata replied, holding her hand tightly and leading her back to town one step at a time. In his mind's eye, he could still see Kageyama's many, many faces: grumpy, mischievous, melancholic, gloating, inquisitive. But never unkind, he supposed—never malicious for the sake of being malicious. 

"Hey, Nii-chan?" 

"Hm?" 

Natsu skipped forward a few steps, her sandals clopping on the ground, and then turned on her heel to grin at her brother. 

"You were right," she declared happily. "This was an awesome birthday present!" 

Later over dinner, Mom asked them about the things they got to see at the beach, and it was perhaps with a secret grin shared between the two of them when big brother and baby sister unanimously agreed that they saw what appeared to be a shark at first—a shark which turned out to be a very breathtaking flying fish, after all. 

* * *

"Sho-chan! There're more over here, look!" 

Some days after Natsu's birthday found Hinata and his two childhood friends busy catching early-evening fireflies by the bank of the Uragami river, with Hinata swiping a particularly fat one with his bug net when Izumi called his name. Looking up with a wide smile, he showed them his bug cage, already populated by the luminous insects, and Koji smiled ruefully back at him and showed him his cage in return. Izumi and Koji were both okay in terms of bug-catching compared to their other classmates, but Hinata could tell that his cage had more fireflies than they did, at least during this particular excursion, and he felt his chest warm up with a certain sense of pride. 

"Shouyou, stop dawdling or they'll fly away already."—Koji's gruffer voice joined Izumi's excited calling. 

Hinata scrambled up the bank to join his friends. The Uragami was also quietly inviting tonight; with the full moon lighting its entirety up, it looked like a silvery snake, winding through the silent town. At this time of day, the neighborhood was finally starting to come alive; air raids were less likely to happen in low visibility like this. The boys played and laughed and played and laughed some more, their nets occasionally making swishing sounds every time someone went for a firefly. As the evening finally fell, the streets were finally aglow with a mixture of traditional lanterns and modern electric lights, and the magical quality of the river was slightly diminished. 

In this distance, Hinata thought he could hear the sea as its waves gently kissed the shore, and he felt extremely moved. 

"I wonder if we're going to have the festival this year," Izumi wondered aloud as they started to pack up for the day, their fireflies already dim and tired with trying to escape from the cages. Hinata was trying to make sure that the straps of his sandals were secure when Koji answered. 

"Probably. I think Dad was called in yesterday because they were going to build some stands or something. If that ain't for the festival next month, I don't know what is." 

"Sweet!" Izumi and Hinata whooped in unison. 

"I hope Terasaka-san sells the blue popsicles this year," Hinata said wistfully. "Natsu likes it a lot." 

"Well, I'm not sure about the color, but if he doesn't sell popsicles this year, the girls in our class would be so mad." 

"Who gets mad over freaking ice cream?" Izumi wondered aloud, frowning. 

They were walking toward the nearest hill now, to release the fireflies that they had caught. Hinata privately thought that he should keep one in a jam jar for Natsu, but to his resignation he wasn't able to bring one at all anyway, so that plan was out. "They keep talking about a silly kind of love charm thing," Koji was explaining to Izumi all the while, sandals clacking noisily on the uneven ground. "If you eat all the way through the blue popsicle and you get the winning stick, and then give it to your crush and he keeps it instead of exchanging it for the free popsicle, your love will come true. Or something." 

"That's silly," Hinata guffawed. 

"Yeah. Like, imagine if someone gives you the winning stick, Koji. What'd be your likeliest move?" 

"Exchange it, of course!" Koji said without hesitation. "Unless, you know. If it happens to come from—never mind," he amended quickly, when he saw Hinata's and Izumi's evil grins. 

"Exactly." 

"Popsicles are getting to be so expensive, anyway," Hinata mourned. "I'd be more likely to beg someone for their winning stick so that I can get a free ice cream." 

"I know, right?" 

They finally reached the hill and took their positions beside each other, Hinata loosening the door of his cage and holding it open. Their fireflies were slow to wake up, but with a few weak shakes of the cage, they finally started to crawl about and find the exit, their black bodies starting to give off the familiar greenish-yellow glow as they flew off in groups. Hinata watched his fireflies soar to freedom, each of them flickering slightly before finally becoming a part of the evening sky. The early evening breeze was perfect, and he could feel it running through his unruly hair like a gentle caress. 

"When's the festival, Koji?" he found himself asking, solemnly. 

"Eh? Oh. First week of next month, I guess?" 

"That means you can still get to spend it with us, Sho-chan!" Izumi said happily. "Before you move away, that is."

"Right." Hinata could feel the beginnings of a smile tug at his lips. "You're absolutely right, Izumin." 

They headed homeward some time after that, deciding to call it a day for now. Hinata's home was the furthest from the river, so he parted with Koji last and made his way home alone, his mind filled with the thoughts and dreams of the young. 

_ What if I bring Kageyama something from the festival, too?  _

_ I wonder if ningyo could eat the same stuff that humans can.  _

_ Or would he prefer a trinket, instead? Something he can keep in his room and look at?  _

_ To remind him of me when I finally go?  _

—Somehow, he found his face growing warmer at that last thought. 

"Sorry, Natsu, I wasn't able to bring you a firefly," was his greeting to his baby sister when he finally arrived home, Natsu greeting him eagerly at the door with her hands outstretched. "Next time, okay?" 

"You always say that," she pouted accusingly as he shrugged his sandals off at the door and padded barefoot to his room. 

"Ow!" 

He was already stowing his net and cage in his closet when he thought he caught his hand on the sharp nail that had always been protruding from the doorpost of the closet; swearing under his breath, he quickly clutched his injured hand and hissed as the pain jolted through his hand. 

"Tch—" 

He glanced at the wound, expecting blood… 

—But as he stared, the wound closed away neatly, leaving his skin as smooth as if it had never happened in the first place. 


	4. harbingers of disaster

"—Kageyama." 

"N-Nee-san…?" 

"Wake up, Kageyama. You're dreaming." 

"Ngh—" 

"Kageyama. —You're safe. It's just a dream."

When Kageyama Tobio finally woke up, eyes half-blinded by unshed tears, it was the gentle, comforting face of Sugawara Koushi that greeted him—

—And all at once, he remembered that Kageyama Miwa was already one with the sea, after all. 

He blinked rapidly, feeling the tears finally spill over and run down his cheeks, and then there was the feeling of the motherly hand that softly brushed them away. 

"S-Sugawara-san—" he rasped, every syllable splintering in his throat. 

"Don't force yourself to speak. Here, stop crying, or your tears might turn into pearls."—teasingly. 

"T-That doesn't actually happen, does it?" Hurriedly, Kageyama scrubbed his face clean in case the stories _were_ true, making Sugawara laugh despite himself. 

"Well—only for some. If you live long enough." 

Feeling himself sober up, Kageyama slowly uncurled himself from the rock that he had been napping on for the past hour, feeling oddly tired and weepy. Sugawara had discovered him in one of his usual haunts: a seaside cave that had formed just slightly below the normal sea level, which was completely submerged during high tide and perfectly dry during low tide. At this time of day, it was still quite dry, though Kageyama could already see the slight rising of the water as the hour of high tide neared. He gently sank his fingers in the shallow water, relishing the soothing feeling of it lapping up against his skin, and then felt the now-familiar twinge of the old pain in his side. 

"Kh—!" 

Breathing hard, he glanced down at his chest, which was as usual covered by his clothes —today, his kimono was a beautifully rosy silk, reminiscent of the dawn, with embroidered white seagulls flying on the hem. He noticed that Sugawara had caught him looking, and was frowning concernedly; his gray eyes were slightly narrowed. 

"Let's reapply the ointment, shall we?" he suggested, stretching a lily-white hand out to the younger ningyo. Nodding slightly and undoing the knot of his obi, Kageyama idly let his eyes travel over Sugawara's hair, ornamented by a simple kamikazari made out of a string of three one-thousand-year-old pearls, the pale, bare torso, and down to the fishtail comfortably stretched over the stones, secretly admiring the lovely, pearl-colored scales that shone with a uniformly iridescent glimmer. Sugawara's great beauty had been the stuff of legend for the past seventeen hundred years; his name was probably renowned across all manner of land and sea youkai across the country, and the admirers seeking him in pilgrimages never actually ceased—not even after he had already found himself a mate. 

Luckily, his mate Sawamura Daichi has never really been hospitable with these outsiders, which meant that the rest of his shoal—a makeshift "family," made up of a mishmash of different personalities who had chosen to stay under Daichi's wing for various reasons—led perfectly quiet lives. 

"Where's Daichi-san and the others?" Kageyama asked stiffly, sucking in a pained breath as he let Sugawara help him out of his damp kimono. Daichi was probably just a little younger than Sugawara, give or take a couple hundred years, though the younger ones in their motley shoal differed in their various opinions about his origins as well. Some posited that Daichi had once been a fisherman who was cursed to grow a fishtail himself after accidentally capturing a ningyo in his net, and some guessed that he was a kannushi whom Sugawara had enchanted so much that he consented to be turned into a ningyo just so that he could be with his one great love, forever and ever. 

—Kageyama, who was technically the youngest and the most recent member of the shoal, noted that even though all of these stories were vastly different from one another, it all started out the same: 

Once, Sawamura Daichi had probably been human. 

It certainly made a lot of sense, if one stopped to think about it; out of all of them, Daichi seemed to be the wisest among the ways of the land-dwellers, knowing their habits, their varied temperaments, their cunning, their way of thinking. However, Daichi had neither confirmed nor denied the stories that his shoal had been telling and retelling amongst themselves, though sometimes he would reprimand the rowdier ones, like the sleek, gray-tailed Tanaka, or Nishinoya who had scales the color of flames, when they spooked the others with wilder made-up stories about the founder of their shoal. 

Sugawara seemed as imperturbable to questions as Daichi, though when asked why he, a living legend even among the mythical ningyo, chose to be with someone whose origins were unknown, he would simply say, "Is love not enough of an answer?" Even the inexperienced and aloof Kageyama, who could probably count on his two hands the times when he had actually been strongly moved by an emotion other than hunger or thirst, could understand the depth and complexity of the long, long relationship between the two just by looking. 

Sugawara was answering Kageyama's question with a light tone as he folded up the kimono neatly and placed it on a nearby rock. "He's been looking for Asahi all morning. That guy probably got caught in another fishpen or something while trying to free the poor things, even though I keep telling him not to." He patted Kageyama's bared shoulder. "Face me, please." 

Kageyama gingerly turned as instructed, and he tried not to wince in embarrassment as Sugawara's sorrowful gaze raked across the ugly burn scar on his entire left side. 

"I… I'm sorry," Sugawara murmured. "I just cannot be used to seeing something as cruel as this, after all." 

"It… it's fine." Kageyama tried his best to meet the gray eyes looking up at him, tried his best to show his sincerity. "Really. I don't mind." 

Sugawara smiled. "…You really are a good kid. Miwa-san raised you well." 

—Kageyama did not grace the statement with an answer. 

Sugawara set to work, and his hands proved to be as swift as they were lovely— Kageyama couldn't help but sigh in relief as the ointment finally soothed the dull aching of the burn. Sugawara smiled, and sternly told him to stay still while the ointment dried into a slightly more water-resistant form. "That should do it," he said quietly, and handed the rose-colored kimono over. "Get dressed once it settles, then join us for lunch back at Shimizu's reef, if you'd like." 

"Thanks," Kageyama said automatically, even though he did not feel particularly inclined to join. However, Sugawara, who was as perceptive as ever, seemed to have read his face correctly, as he chuckled and held up a warning finger. 

"Kageyama, I know you've been visiting the shore far more often than is prudent for our kind, but—" A slight flash of anger, which chilled Kageyama to the bone even though he knew it wasn't directed at him, marred Sugawara's lovely countenance for a split second, then melted away to concern. "Daichi says that soon, it's not going to be safe for us any longer. You may again encounter one of the things that injured you, and remember—even though we have incredibly resilient bodies, we _can_ be injured or killed when certain conditions are met. You do know that, don't you?" 

"Y-Yes." Kageyama nodded curtly. 

( _"Live!"_

At the back of his mind, he could still feel Miwa's arms protectively clasped around him, slowly disappearing into the foam—)

"I'll leave you alone for now. I wonder if Daichi is back yet?" Sugawara wondered aloud, and affectionately patted the piece of bixbite adorning Kageyama's hair before turning away. 

"Sugawara-san…?" 

He found himself calling out even as Sugawara was about to leave, hating himself for doing this, hating himself even more for feeling this way. 

"Hm?" 

"Is it true… what humans say about us?" 

—Even with such a peaceful face, Sugawara had such sorrowful eyes. 

Those were the eyes of an immortal, Kageyama realized. 

"Are we… are we really harbingers of disaster?" 

_Will I bring even more misfortune if I go back to shore?_ was his unspoken question, and Sugawara raised his eyebrows and thought for a bit before finally answering. 

"I certainly don't know about us being harbingers, Kageyama," he said, seriously, "but humans have had a long history of bringing disaster down on themselves. We certainly cannot be omens of what is not already about to happen." 

"I…" 

"Hey, Kageyama?" 

"Yes. —Sugawara-san." 

"This may sound heartless of me to say, but—all youkai are born from the wishes and emotions of humans, much like the gods themselves. Perhaps, a human out there has wished for you so strongly in their heart, and that is why you have been born." 

An angelic smile. 

"—Humans think we are unlucky, and perhaps yes, we may be to them," Sugawara added, "but on the other hand, don't you think that they are also equally bad luck to our kind—in more ways than one?"

Sugawara turned away. Kageyama contented himself with staring blankly at the white skin of the other ningyo's nape, his mind drifting to a certain brilliant-haired human boy. 

"You're not an inherently bad person just because you have been born a ningyo, Kageyama." 

* * *

There was so much to do, nowadays, that Hinata Shouyou was a little surprised to realize that a week had already passed since the weird incident with the nail—so long, that it seemed more like a figment of his imagination to him now. 

Koji's initial suspicions about the festival had proved to be correct, though it ended up being scheduled for the second Wednesday of August instead of the first week, as they had assumed; all hands around the village were to help with assembling decorations and other props to be used for the festival. Even Natsu, who was deemed old enough to help, was busy folding clumsy paper flowers that will be used to adorn some of the food stands. 

Hinata, for his part, had been tasked to help at the shrine to assemble various fixtures, along with the other boys of his age. The seventeen-year-old twin sons of the current kannushi of the shrine, Miya-san, also went to help; Hinata found himself wondering during the first few hours who is whom, though he finally realized that they were very different from each other. Atsumu defiantly wore western-style work overalls over his hakamashita and was louder and more vibrant, almost always proactive with offering his (sometimes unwanted) help to the group, while Osamu dressed more conservatively, was laidback and preferred to work by himself, and can respond very acidly when addressed, though his sarcasm possessed a tinge of humor beneath his standoffish tone. 

"Hinata-kun, are you done with that board?" Atsumu came over, a too-bright grin plastered all over his face. 

"Almost." Wiping off a bead of sweat that had trickled down his temple, Hinata stuck his tongue out as he finished driving the last nail home. Atsumu whistled as he knelt down and surveyed the finished work appraisingly, and gave Hinata a slap on the back that took almost all of the wind from his body. 

"Good work!" Atsumu rose and helped him up with one hand; in the corner of Hinata's eye, he could see Osamu steadily plugging away at his own task, the hammer in his hand ever so often glinting in the weak sunlight. "At this pace, we guys could even finish early. Mother and her girls are cooking us a giant feast in the kitchens right now, just for the helpers." 

"Cool!" Hinata exclaimed. 

"Atsumu, stop standing around like some kind of foreman surveying his crew and continue working," came Osamu's pointed comment. "We still have a ton of crap to do, you know." 

"Ugh, fine." A sunny grin at Hinata. "Hey, let's help out my whiny kid brother, eh?" 

"I'm not your kid brother or anything. We're _twins_." 

"Yeah, but I came out first!" 

"Who even _cares_? We're TWINS." 

Hinata smiled as he went over to where the twins were still bickering, and set to work once more. 

The hard task was extremely exhausting, but refreshing; Hinata had probably sweated more in the past hour than he did during the past seven days, but he discovered that he didn't really mind. All around him, he could hear the rhythmic _whack-whack-whack_ noises made by the other boys and adults in their group; just beneath the tree shade, Izumi was determinedly finishing his task, round face shining with sweat, while Koji was over by the torii, helping out with the lanterns. 

"Hinata-kun? Oi. Hi-na-ta-ku-n." 

It took him a second to realize that Atsumu was trying to call his attention; on his other side, Osamu was staring off blankly into the trees and idly resting the hammer against the plank he had been working on, presumably taking a break. 

"Sorry! Er, I was, um…" 

"No, it's fine." Atsumu waved it off, all smiles, and Hinata relaxed. "As I was saying, you got any dreams of your own, Hinata-kun? Ya know. Aside from growing a few more inches, and stuff—" 

"Oi, you're being rude." Osamu. 

Atsumu just chuckled, while Hinata flushed a deep red. "Sorry, sorry. That was out of line. So, Hinata-kun? Ever thought what you'd like to be after high school?" 

Hinata thought of Dad's silhouette, and of death, and of the bombs, and of the unknown. "I'm still figuring things out." 

"Well, I guess you _are_ a first-year yet in the local high school right? I guess the future is quite far off for you, then." 

"They've cancelled classes for now due to the raids, right?" Osamu put in. 

"Yep," Hinata said. "I don't remember ever seeing you two at school, Atsumu-san. Does that mean you guys attend a different one?" 

"Yeah. Osamu and I go to the high school in the next town over. It's bigger and livelier than the poor pittance of a school we have over here." Atsumu sighed. "I mean, don't get me wrong, but I know that there's something grander outside of this backwoods town, and I want to be in the middle of it all." 

"Er, the city, you mean?" 

"Not just the city! More like the _world_ , maybe," Atsumu said. "Let me see the world with my own eyes—that's big enough of a dream, huh?" 

"What's wrong with staying here?" Osamu sighed. "Stay here and be the next kannushi like dad wanted. If I remember correctly, you just said that you're _older_ —" 

"Um, if you haven't noticed, we're periodically getting bombed over _here_ —" 

"Yeah, okay. But do you have to go out of the country to avoid the bombs?" Osamu wrinkled his nose. "Besides—the whole _world_ is at war, not just our country." 

"—But we're winning," Hinata said, nonplussed, glancing back and forth at Atsumu and Osamu. "The guy in the news said that we're starting to drive the enemy back…" 

Both of the Miya twins glanced at Hinata at his sudden comment. 

Doggedly, Hinata pushed on, "So it's possible that the war will be over soon, right?" 

"I guess so," Osamu finally conceded. 

"Uh huh," Atsumu agreed, though without much conviction, and sensing that he had just killed the conversation, Hinata bit his lip and gripped the handle of his hammer tightly in one hand, and resumed the steady rhythm of _whack-whack-whack_ once more. 

They ended up finishing their job early for the day, as Atsumu had guessed, and the kannushi's wife and her servants soon transformed the shrine grounds into one big dining hall for the helpers. Hinata wolfed his dinner down, partly because he was famished from the work and partly because he wanted to be able to leave as quickly as possible, but when he finally finished his food and stood up to say goodbye to the Miyas, he found that Miya Atsumu had already walked up to him first. 

"Hey, are you going so soon, Hinata-kun?" he said. Osamu was trailing behind him, looking extremely uncomfortable. 

"Don't cling to the kid like that, 'Tsumu," he was saying, but Atsumu ignored him.

Hinata managed a weak smile at the other twin to show that he was quite alright. "Yes, Atsumu-san. Thanks for the hospitality." 

"Okay, then. I'm not really going to stop you." Atsumu smiled just a bit, and patted Hinata on the shoulder. "See you tomorrow, alright?" 

"Thanks," and Hinata bowed low to the both of them, and quickly made his way down the shrine. 

He wasn't really expecting Kageyama Tobio to be there at this time, especially when the sun has well disappeared beneath the horizon and he hasn't visited him for days, but there was still a thrill in his chest as he crawled into the crevice hidden in the rocks and exited into the familiar coziness of the cove. 

The cove looked vastly different in the early evening; with the sky rapidly darkening and the clouds even darker, there was nothing but the moonlight to illuminate the place—and, to Hinata's delighted surprise, hundreds of clusters of sea fireflies, being washed ashore and shining their weak, blue light. 

Unable to resist the water, he kicked his sandals off and waded into the shallow waves, kicking the sand about and making just a general fool of himself, now that no one was watching. The wind was strong, and it smelled of the salt, and oddly of Kageyama Tobio as well—he spread his arms out, relishing the feeling of the breeze catching his sleeves and making them billow, like huge brown wings made of cotton. He took a great, big breath, and exhaled it all out in one huge wordless cry—"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"—and he heard it travel across the vast, vast ocean, before it was returned to him by the echoes— 

"Oi. Dumbass." 

"WHA—" 

"Stop yelling—people are trying to take a nap around here, you know." 

Kageyama Tobio dragged himself onto shore from behind the rocks that he had been sleeping on, an extremely irritated look in his eyes as he surveyed Hinata. In the dark, it was almost impossible to tell the color of the kimono that he was wearing, though the sea fireflies that had been caught in the folds of silk and his scales made it seem as if he had just dipped his entire body in starlight. "And what brings you here in this time of day?" he asked, his tone borderline rude with the annoyance that he felt, and Hinata had to bite back a grin or else risk Kageyama's temper flaring up more than it had been already. "Isn't it dangerous for human children to be out this late—" 

Hinata chucked a handful of sand at his face, making Kageyama swear loudly. "I'm not a kid anymore, stupid. I'm sixteen already. And the planes don't come at night." 

"Sixteen? Could've fooled me," Kageyama was muttering, but he immediately quieted down when Hinata made as if to grab another fistful of sand. 

"I should ask _you_ what you're doing here, too," Hinata muttered, as Kageyama rolled over on his back to stare at the sky. He half-expected an immediate comeback from the ningyo, but he remained silent, and after a few more moments with nothing forthcoming from Kageyama, Hinata finally decided to pad over and lay beside him on the damp sand, feeling the gentle waves wash over his sandy toes and the brush of the tiny luminous cephalopods that produced the strange, mystical blue light. 

They lay on their backs, both watching the sky slowly change into an inky black, with the huge moon drowning out the light of the very stars themselves. 

"I sleep here every evening, now," Kageyama suddenly said, and Hinata's fingers twitched involuntarily. 

"Why?" he asked. 

"I don't know." Kageyama's voice was faraway, and wistful. "Because you said no one knew about this place? Because no one I knew has found out about this place yet? —I don't know." 

"Not even your sister?" 

"…" 

"…"

"…"

"…Kageyama?" 

"—Nope." 

"Oh. I see." 

"She's… already gone." 

"G—gone—?" 

That answer, delivered so flatly, as though Kageyama had perfectly practiced saying it to himself every morning and every night, recited it to himself over and over until the word lost all meaning and ceased to be a word and is nothing but sound, now—

—It broke Hinata's heart. 

He brought his hand up from the sand and felt around, until— 

"Oi. What are you doing?" 

—Hinata finally closed on clammy skin, and he laced his fingers through Kageyama's. 

"—Nothing. Just let me do it." 

He thought that Kageyama was going to pull away, or to at least gripe about the too-familiar action, but he did nothing of the sort; they just lay there on the sand, fingers interlocked in the distance between them, their eyes carefully trained on the moon in the distance.

"You know," Kageyama finally remarked, "you're burning up. I feel like my hand is slowly getting roasted off." 

"—I'm normal. For humans, anyway. It's _your_ hand that feels like ice to me. So fair's fair." 

The prerequisite barbs having been exchanged already, they soon lapse into another silence. 

"What did she look like?" Hinata asked in a whisper. "Your sister?" 

"I'm starting to forget, actually." Kageyama wrinkled his nose. "It's been months." 

"That's not good." Hinata released a shaky sigh. "Not good at all, Kageyama-kun." 

"I don't want to have to remember." 

"But she wouldn't have wanted you to forget her, either." 

"So. If…" Kageyama swallowed nervously, then pushed on. "If you had been in my place, would you? Remember Natsu, I mean?" 

Hinata closed his eyes, and thought of Natsu. Her wide smile, her great eyes. Her lisping, her waddling. Her voice. Her many, many babyish habits. The way she knew that her big brother was wrapped around her little finger and couldn't refuse her anything— 

"Yes, of course." Hinata smiled. "And I'll allow myself to cry for her. Until there's no more tears left in me to cry." 

"—That sounds like you." 

"Thank you." 

"Not a compliment." 

"You're not even going to let me get away with it? Kageyama, you bastard…" 

Kageyama was probably smiling; in the dark, Hinata wasn't so sure. But the hand he was holding had relaxed into his, and the tension between them has finally drifted away into the waves. 

"They all said I resemble my sister a lot." 

"Who did?" 

"Everyone. Everyone we met in our travels. Even Sugawara-san, and Daichi-san." 

"Your travels, huh?" Hinata recalled Miya Atsumu's words— _"Let me see the world with my own eyes"_ —and bit his lip slightly. "Is it a huge world out there, Kageyama?" 

"The oceans are vast," Kageyama replied. "Even my adventurous sister couldn't say that she has traveled the entire world—so it probably is, yes." 

"Hmm." Hinata closed his eyes lightly, trying to picture water. Nothing but water. A vast, endless stretch of it—what an idea. "So your sister looks like you. She's probably remarkably pretty, then." 

"Pretty? I wouldn't say that…" 

"—But, you're the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life." 

He felt Kageyama shift beside him, and suddenly Hinata realized just how his answer sounded like, and he blushed—thankfully, the cover of darkness was enough to eclipse the extent of the damage, though he wondered if Kageyama could sense his body temperature ricochet up a couple more degrees. "You think that I'm beautiful?" Kageyama was asking him, and the way his voice sounded made Hinata doubly sure that if he just tilted his head the right angle, he'd be staring into breathtakingly dark eyes. 

"Yes," he finally replied, sounding a lot braver than he actually felt. 

He felt Kageyama stare at him for a couple more minutes of silence, before the arm pressed comfortably against him started to shake—and then Hinata realized that his friend was laughing, or something remarkably close to it, because somehow, unlike when he was gloating or being silly, Kageyama's laughs are remarkably quiet when sincerely happy, as though afraid to let anyone else hear it. 

"You should have your eyes checked out, dumbass," was finally the answer. "If I'm beautiful, what does that make Sugawara-san? He makes everyone else swimming beside him look like garbage." 

"Sugawara-san?" 

"Oh. He's one of the patriarchs of the shoal that took me in when… when that happened to Nee-san." 

"Ah. So you did get another family, after all." Hinata let out a sigh. "That's good." 

"Yeah. They've been taking good care of me." 

Hinata smiled in the darkness. 

"Hey, Kageyama," he said. 

"Hm?" 

Hinata felt Kageyama's fingers tighten around his hand again, momentarily, and he squeezed back. 

"Even though they say that meeting a ningyo is bad luck—I really am glad to have met you, you know." 

"…Really?" 

The innocent, single-word question hung between the two of them, spoken in the voice of someone who was hopelessly lost, and suddenly Hinata was hyper-aware that the immortal creature beside him was, perhaps, not more than a mere child himself, after all. 

"Yes," he breathed. 

"Ah," Kageyama said, and the exclamation was not that of surprise, or sadness, or of any particular humanly emotion that Hinata could decipher. 

If anything, perhaps, it was more of an affirmation—that he understood what Hinata was trying to say, that the message has been heard loud and clear. 

"I'm glad to have met you, too," Kageyama said, almost shyly, and to Hinata's ears, his tremulous words sounded like a song. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kannushi—a person in charge of a Shinto shrine.


	5. if i go away to the sea

_"If I go away to the sea, I shall return a corpse awash…"_

The annoyingly familiar war anthem was the first thing that Tsukishima Kei heard when he finally walked into the conservation laboratory that morning, two cups of coffee clutched in his hand. He glanced at the laptop over to the side, which was blasting the song at full volume (for the fifth straight day this week), and ran his eyes over the seemingly empty room until he spotted the tuft of dark hair hunched over something on the floor. Slightly worried that something may have happened to one of the pieces they had been working on (Yamaguchi had a reputation for being particularly clumsy back in their internship days, though he had gotten a lot better as he spent longer at this job), he deposited the coffees on a table and hurried forward to take a look at his lab partner. 

"Yamaguchi?" 

"It's nothing, sorry. I just dropped this thing." Yamaguchi Tadashi looked over at him, and Tsukishima thought he saw a small white envelope in his hand. "This was what came in this morning." 

_"If duty calls me to the mountain, a verdant sward shall be my pall…"_ the computer droned on, and Tsukishima frowned. 

"That thing is smaller than a money envelope," he frowned, and Yamaguchi nodded in an _"I know, right?"_ sort of way as he got up and carefully dragged a stool over so that they can look over the envelope at their leisure. It weighed next to nothing and was quite tiny, like Tsukishima said, and was also wholly unmarked, except for the small, elegant writing on the back that spelled out: 

_Conservation Center_

_Sendai City Museum_

_26 Kawauchi, Aoba Ward, Sendai, Miyagi 980-0862, Japan_

Tsukishima handed a letter knife over and watched, curious despite himself, as Yamaguchi carefully placed the tip of the knife under the flap and opened it in one smooth motion. He placed his handkerchief under the envelope and carefully let the contents slide out— 

"This is…" 

_"Thus for the sake of the Emperor, I will not die peacefully at home—"_

"I'm starting to get tired of that song," Tsukishima remarked acidly, as an awed Yamaguchi turned the thing over and over in his gloved hand and the song looped back to the beginning, filling the room with the somber melody yet again. "Even if we're working in a museum, it does not mean we have to play such antiquated songs like _that_ , too." 

"Sorry, Tsukki." Yamaguchi didn't sound particularly repentant or apologetic, though. "It's just that, war anthems can be so morbid and motivational at the same time, aren't they? They just… _fascinate_ me. And besides, _If I Go Away To The Sea_ is more soothing to listen to than the others." 

"The lyrics are extremely gruesome, though." Tsukishima leaned over to squint at Yamaguchi's hand. "So. What's that?" 

"I…" Yamaguchi scowled slightly, peering at the thing he held in his hands. "Actually, I think it's a hairpin of some kind? Weird." 

"No note?" Tsukishima carefully took the envelope apart, but no slips of paper flew out, nor was there any other writing on the inside of the envelope. 

Yamaguchi held up the hairpin, and Tsukishima's eyes narrowed behind his glasses when they caught the single pearl and the scraps of sea fern that adorned the accessory. "—Pretty sure it's real. We should probably have Ennoshita-san take a look at it later so that he can date it, though." 

"Yeaaah," Yamaguchi muttered, drawing out the sound in his concentration. "This craftsmanship is so weird, though. It looks… _handmade_ , if I do say so myself. It feels clumsier than the machine-made ones." 

"Well. No matter." Tsukishima held out his hand and Yamaguchi reluctantly replaced the pearl hairpin in its envelope to hand it over to his colleague. "Let's first check if it's old enough to be valuable, then we'll talk about how it was made. Also—" He jerked a thumb at the computer, which was still blasting the song. "—something that's _at least_ thirty years newer better be playing on that when I get back, or I'll be dictating the entire playlist starting next week." 

"Oh, fine," Yamaguchi said, smiling, and without another word Tsukishima Kei stalked out of the room with the envelope in his hand. 

* * *

_"Dumbass. Dumbass Hinata."_

Hinata Shouyou was quite certain that if he could just understand the sounds that were coming out of Kageyama Tobio's mouth right now, they'd probably be those all-too-familiar words. He tried shoving the gloating Kageyama away when he swam closer toward him, his pale green kimono (patterned with white lotuses) flowing gracefully in the water after him, and the ningyo cracked a grin at his irritation, which made Hinata scowl even deeper. 

It was now the middle of this brilliantly hot summer, and both of them were underwater, Hinata having foolishly bet Kageyama that he could hold his breath for longer than five minutes. However, it was barely one and a half minutes in and he could already feel his lungs straining; meanwhile, Kageyama, who was of course completely at home in this kind of environment, was still laughing at him and saying something that he could somehow feel, rather than hear, through the water, though the sounds were so unlike Japanese that he knew they couldn't have been in his language. 

_"—Dumbass."_

Though, Hinata thought with an annoyed quirk of his brow, he really did not need to speak ningyo to understand that Kageyama was still calling him by that stupid pet insult of his. 

However, even while he felt like he was slowly dying in this other world beneath the waves, just focusing on the figure of the ningyo before him was, as always, enough to set him at ease. Today, Kageyama was wearing a single piece of jade as his one adornment, which shimmered prettily against the black silk of his hair. His sharp dark eyes seemed almost blue in the aquamarine light, while under the collar of the green kimono, Hinata could see a glimpse of a shapely collarbone, which would have made his breath catch if he had been above water, but which was currently only limited to making his face feel as hot as if he was being baked under the sun. 

Kageyama was saying something again, though this time it was nothing that sounded remotely familiar. Even with his lungs feeling like they were bursting at the seams, Hinata managed to wave his hands and shake his head to indicate that he did not understand at all, which made Kageyama roll his eyes and point at the smattering of corals that stretched across the shallow sea floor, just a few feet below them. 

Still not catching on to what the other was saying and a little too preoccupied with his desire to breathe to actually care, Hinata finally had to admit his defeat—he kicked his feet, sending a huge wave of bubbles cascading to Kageyama, who effortlessly caught up with him with two strokes of his powerful tail and easily supported him out of the water. Their faces broke out of the surface at almost the same time, Hinata gasping and spluttering, while Kageyama's face was the picture of total boredom. 

"That was pathetic," he was sighing, while Hinata quickly wrestled himself away from Kageyama's grip to swim to shore. "Now you owe me another dare." 

"Fine. Is what you were gesturing at earlier related to this, by any chance?" 

Kageyama's evil grin was _sooo_ annoying, Hinata decided, as it crept across his face once more. "Yeah. I knew you wouldn't last, anyway." 

"Ugh fine. But I'll do it later. Let me catch my breath first." 

"Humans, as feeble as always," Kageyama muttered as Hinata rolled around in the sand to make himself feel a little cooler. 

Hinata didn't grace his challenge with a response; however, as Kageyama reluctantly hoisted himself up on a nearby rock to sun himself, he caught the sparkling colors on the fishtail once more, and suddenly remembered what he had been meaning to ask for the past week. 

"—Hey, Kageyama." 

"What is it again?" 

"—Next week, do you wanna go to the festival with me?" 

A stunned silence, where Kageyama just stared at him, nonplussed, while Hinata fidgeted and stared at his hands. At the last, there was a long sigh, and a pointed glare from the ningyo that screamed, _"Were you dropped on your head as a child?"_

Knowing what the ningyo's rebuttal would be, Hinata hurriedly opened his mouth before Kageyama could hurl abuse. "I know. You can't literally go into the center of town. Yada, yada." Hinata carded a hand through his vibrant curls and smiled shyly. "But… I could bring the festival to you? Somewhat? And we can still watch the fireworks from here. It'll be lovely. You don't know what a summer festival is like yet, don't you?"

"Yes, but I don't know where you got the idea that I'll be remotely interested in such a _human_ activity—" 

"It's going to be our last nice memory together," Hinata suddenly blurted out. "Before Natsu and I move to Miyagi and everything. So…" He trailed off, red in the face, and if his chest hadn't been rising and falling normally, one would have suspected that he accidentally choked on something. 

Kageyama fell silent at these words, his eyes narrowing, as though trying to analyze each and every sound that Hinata had just produced. 

"Please," Hinata finally said, lip slightly trembling. "For me?" 

—And without another word, and not understanding why he did it, himself, Kageyama nodded his head slightly. 

"Great!" Hinata's quick smile was like the sun breaking out from behind a mass of gray clouds. "I'll bring you a ton of food and stuff and we can play here all night long—I can easily give Mom the slip during something like this—Oh, what do you like eating best? I could look for it among the food stalls—" 

"I can eat anything, really," Kageyama replied, amused, and Hinata grinned at him and carried on with his excited talk about the festival, on and on until Kageyama could almost even picture it in his head for a bit, even though certain words flew past his head entirely. He smiled slightly as Hinata started drawing images on the sand to help his descriptions along (though they were so bad that they did not resemble the real things at all, Kageyama would find out much later), and Hinata was in the middle of drawing a huge snow cone in the middle of the sand—when he accidentally stepped on a piece of broken shell on the ground, and was so surprised by this that he fell on his ass on the sand. 

Slightly concerned, Kageyama was about to approach Hinata and perhaps find a way to help him—but then Hinata peered closely at the bleeding wound on the sole of his right foot, and to Kageyama's confusion, and then consternation— 

The wound had already sewn itself back up, and when Hinata wiped the blood away, it was as though there was nothing there in the first place. 

Perhaps feeling Kageyama's eyes staring holes into him, Hinata raised his head and cheerily waved. 

"I'm fine. See?" 

"What—the fuck—was _that_?" 

Hinata could feel the many emotions rolling from Kageyama's skin, none of them particularly pleasant, and he started to feel a little confused, himself. 

"I, I don't really know what this is, myself." Hinata gently stroked the place where the wound had been, a fond smile spreading on his face despite himself, and Kageyama suddenly found his tongue too stiff to talk. "But I only noticed that it started happening ever since I first met you, and it's one of the reasons why I don't think the stories about you being bad luck are true. Maybe it's your weird ningyo powers affecting me too because we're near each other a lot? I don't know." A grin. "But I'm kinda glad. It's like proof that you're always looking after me, see?" 

If this had been any other time or circumstance, Kageyama would certainly have felt flattered; actually, there was a small place in his heart that _was_ moved that this small human thought of his presence as more of a boon than a curse, but then—the phenomenon that he had just witnessed—that was— That was eerily like— 

"Hey, dumbass Hinata." There was no teasing in his tone, now. Hinata looked up, wary at the change in Kageyama's voice, and while there was no change in expression on the ningyo's face, there was a chill in those dark eyes that made even the blazing sun overhead quail. 

"K-Kageyama?" 

_"Is it true… what humans say about us?"_

In his mind's eye, he could still remember Sugawara Koushi's beautiful, sorrowful, gray eyes gazing at him when he blurted that question. The beauty mark under his eye. An omen marking someone for a lifetime filled with tears, even among ningyo. 

_"Are we… are we really harbingers of disaster?"_

Even though he had no such mark under his eye, Kageyama could feel his heart wrench with pain in his chest at the idea of what he had just brought to fruition. Just by existing. Just by being—what he is. 

_"You're not an inherently bad person just because you have been born a ningyo, Kageyama."_

Sugawara had said that. And yet— and yet—

"Tell me again how you saved my life, Hinata." 

Hinata frowned at this question; however, sensing that Kageyama's eyes still allowed no talking back, he haltingly replied, "I already told you, I brought you out of the water, cuz you were unconscious." 

"Then what." 

"Then I discovered that you had been bitten by a snake. Remember?" 

True enough. But after that, Hinata's story stops short, usually. "—But how did you manage to save me from that? You always refuse to tell me past that point." 

"I—" Hinata was blushing furiously, and though Kageyama was in a tempestuous mood, he could sense that it was not an easy thing for the boy to talk about. "I sucked it out. Venom and all. There was even a bit of fang stuck in your wound at first." A shudder. "Gross. But then I spat it out and got it all out in the end, and you woke up. That's it. Really." A hopeful glance, as though trying to gauge Kageyama's face for a sign of approval, but the ningyo's eyes remained cold and dark. 

"Did you ever ask yourself how you were able to tell when to stop?" 

"S-Stop?" Even Hinata seemed confused by this line of questioning; Kageyama finally smiled, but it was a bitter smile, a smile that finally realized what had actually happened. 

"Tell me, Hinata. Was it really as good as the stories say?" 

"W-What is?" 

"My blood?" Kageyama's face. 

Hinata's mouth was dry. 

Kageyama was smiling, but it was mirthless. "Don't pretend you don't know the stories. Don't pretend you don't know why we are so dreaded by humans. It's not because we have such extraordinary powers, you know." Kageyama's voice. It was the first time Hinata has heard him speak like this. "Take away our tails and our ability to live underwater, and ningyo only really have one real supernatural ability in their name, and that is the ability to bequeath something that humans have been desiring since the beginning of time. And since our flesh and blood is so delicious to your kind, it's so difficult to connect us with the curse that it brings. How can something so delicious be so _bad_?" 

"What—" Hinata was scrambling to his feet, but then Kageyama was already pushing himself off the rocks, and his face was unreadable. "Kageyama! What did I do wrong? Tell me! What are you talking about? What—" Tears. Tears, running down his face, because he has felt the great divide. "What have I done—?"

"Hinata. Thank you for your words the other day. They meant a lot to me. But…

"I think that you might have been wrong about me." 

Kageyama turned away, sick to his stomach with hatred. Hatred at whom, he could not tell—but perhaps a little at Hinata, who was heartbreakingly innocent, and a little at himself, for letting his own weakness start this entire chain of misfortune— 

_Sugawara-san— I am—_

"I _am_ a harbinger of disaster, after all." 

"Kageyama! Kageyama!" 

Hinata's cries fell on deaf ears; with one last look, Kageyama had dived into the blue and had disappeared. 

"Kageyama—" 

Hinata scrambled on the sand after his friend, desperate, because the look in Kageyama's eyes— 

He looked as terrified and wary of Hinata as Hinata was of him. 

And Kageyama, who was strong, who can beat Hinata at anything, whose eyes never contained anything but confidence and kindness until today— 

Why did his eyes contain so much fear, now? 

Why was he so afraid? 

Was he afraid of Hinata? Of _Hinata_? 

—His friend? 

_"Kageyama!"_

Hinata's feet hit the water and he waded in; his eyes were blinded with tears. 

"Come back!" 

And with one last spurt of strength, he dove into the water, chasing after the boy that he had saved that fateful day in this very same beach, the boy who was now running away because of that same deed— 

_Kageyama, Kageyama, come back to me—_

—But as he finally dove deeper, chasing after a shadow that he thought to be the one he had been looking for, something hit him hard across the head, and the world under the sea, beautiful and dangerous, received his falling body as his consciousness faded into black—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real Karumai/Karasuno is in Iwate, but let's take a leaf out of Furudate-sensei's book and place it in Miyagi in this universe as well.


	6. returning to land

"Aren't you going to die, yet?" 

The young farmer's son looked up from the fishing line that he had been fruitlessly dangling into the water for almost an hour now; his cracked lips felt like death, the clothes on his frame had never felt as baggy as they did now, and he was quite sure that he _had_ died already (or at least, was very close to it), because the head that was peeking from the waves and calling out the strange question at him was that of an extremely attractive boy with silvery hair, perhaps around his age. 

He readjusted his seating on the edge of the pier and squinted into the water, trying to determine if the boy was an illusion caused by his hunger, when the boy in the water repeated his question in that melodic voice—

"Hey. Aren't you going to die, yet?" 

"I refuse to," the farmer's son rasped back, mentally cursing at himself for sounding so unseemly; but the boy only chuckled and smiled, showing even rows of teeth. The farmer only stared, almost forgetting to breathe, and the boy threw his head back and laughed, a tinkling sound that made time itself stutter for a moment. 

"Tell me," the boy said, and he gestured to a lump of meat farther down on the beach. "Are the others in your village like that thing over there?" 

Dispassionately, the farmer's son glanced back over his shoulder at the lump, and nodded. 

"My father, my mother, my brothers, the oxen, my dog. All gone," he murmured. He then looked suspiciously at the boy. "Are you a shinigami?" 

"Perhaps I am," he said. 

"Have you come to take me away?"

"No, not yet," the boy in the water replied, and gracefully drew closer to the fishing line in the water. Outrageously, the farmer's son found himself thinking that the beautiful boy was going to deviously snap the line or something to prevent him from fishing any further, but then he felt a slight tugging at his rod, and when he quickly reeled the line it was with a delighted face that he found a fish caught on the hook. 

"Eat." 

"I—did you do _this_?" And delightedly, the farmer's son stared at the fish, watching it flop about feebly in his grasp, then hugging it tightly to his ribs in case it accidentally slips out of his arms and back into the water. "Some shinigami you are, if you're helping me live a little longer." 

"Well…"

That wicked, beautiful smile once more.

"The persistence of humans to survive is, for me,—kind of interesting." 

* * *

"—Hinata-kun. _Hinata-kun_." 

"'Tsumu, are you trying to kill the kid? Don't jolt him like that, his brains might spill out of his ears—" 

"Gross, what're you talking about? I'm just shaking him a little, just a bit—" 

"—Wait. Atsumu. I think he's…" 

"Oh, he's awake." 

When Hinata Shouyou opened his eyes, his first thought was that he was seeing double. 

Miya Atsumu was in his face, allowing a lightly concerned expression to spread on his face, and Hinata could also see the impassive Miya Osamu hovering at his shoulder. 

"Hiya, Hinata-kun. You took quite a dunking, eh? Almost scared us both out of our wits, Osamu and I, when we saw something floating in the water—" 

"Speak for yourself, dumbass," Osamu was saying, though his retort sounded less snappier than usual. 

Hinata coughed out some more water, and then opened his eyes a little wider. To his horror, it was all starting to come back—the broken shell, his wound, Kageyama's reaction to his weird regeneration. His bitter expression, his abrupt departure. His eyes. His _fear_. "Atsumu-san—? Where—?" 

"We're kind of near the shrine, actually, on the other side of town. You can already see Mitsubishi's factory over there if you look. See?" 

Hinata turned his head, and acknowledged that Atsumu was speaking the truth; absently, he noted the lazy smoke trail drifting upward from the chimney of one of the factories. 

"Don't move too much, Hinata," Osamu was saying. "You almost drowned, you should rest—" 

"'Almost'? Don't be so soft, 'Samu." 

Osamu looked faintly mutinous at the interruption, but Atsumu continued, addressing Hinata, "You really _had_ drowned before we even got to you, Hinata-kun. You were probably dead for, what, seven or eight minutes? Nine, tops." 

Hinata couldn't quite process the words coming out of Atsumu's mouth. He felt slightly nauseous. 

_Drowned? Dead?_

He felt the cold water trickle down his neck. 

"W-What?" 

He looked at Osamu for confirmation; the younger Miya twin scowled, and nodded reluctantly. "You weren't breathing at all. Cold as ice. No heartbeat, too."

"—That is, until a couple seconds ago. We got scared as heck when you just started coughing out water and breathing again, and now…" Atsumu jokingly spread his arms. "Well, let's just say, welcome back to the world of the living again, Hinata-kun." 

"You're both mad," Hinata gasped out. "There's no way—" 

"Yes way," Atsumu said. "You're somewhat of an immortal, aint'cha? No shame in admitting that. 'Sactually quite convenient, living in times like this." 

Hinata was about to laugh, to shrug it off as a joke, to let the Miya twins that enough is enough, so let him go home already. But then he could see the mirrored expression in both twins' eyes—an expression that told him, despite how much he wanted not to believe in it himself, that what they were saying was in dead earnest. 

"But I'm perfectly human. How would I—" 

"Bzzt. Wrong again." Atsumu grinned. "Sorry, Hinata-kun. I don't think you can still call yourself wholly human at this point. Like, even at a fundamental level." 

Osamu fidgeted awkwardly. "Is that why you kept on sticking to Hinata the entire time when we first met?" 

"Well, I _knew_ I smelled something different on him back at the shrine," Atsumu was murmuring back. "I've heard of the stories, of course, but I've never actually seen an actual case of a human like him—" 

"Don't start talking as if I'm not here," Hinata managed to snap out, even though half of his brain seemed willing to sink into something like shock any minute now. "And whatever is going on with my body right now—I don't _want_ it." 

"Well," Atsumu said, "then you're in a pretty bad fix, if you're telling us the truth." 

"But what's happening?" Hinata said, and suddenly he was yelling, all thoughts of courtesy flying out as he recalled those dark eyes again. _Kageyama, you bastard! Idiot! You heartless idiot!_ "What's happening to me? Why won't you guys just tell me already, dammit? Why wouldn't _Kageyama—_?" 

The Miya twins exchanged looks once more as Hinata broke off, the rest of his sentence cut off by his unwilling throat, and while Atsumu seemed to have been lightly teasing about the situation so far, he wasn't unkind after all. He pulled Hinata up to his feet, and Osamu threw a jacket over his shivering frame. 

"Best not catch a cold," he said, "though, it's difficult to catch any in this heat, I guess." 

"Let's go and fill you up a little, huh?" Atsumu said. "Before you die again of hunger, that is. And maybe also find a better place to… talk." 

"Go… where?" 

"Home," Osamu said, and Hinata felt a little lurch in his chest when he realized that he was pointing up at the shrine on the summit of the hill. 

—However, even with his countless reservations to the plan, a long, hot bath did, in fact, end up helping Hinata feel a little better. 

The Miyas were, of course, used to entertaining guests at all times of the day, and the twins' mother rose to the occasion magnificently. Hinata didn't even have time to think before he realized that he had finally been ushered into the bath and into some new, clean clothes, though it was with not a little trepidation that he was summoned into the dining hall at the back of the shrine to eat with the twins. 

Miya Atsumu wrinkled his nose the moment he came in. Surreptitiously, Hinata sniffed at himself, but Osamu shook his head. 

"You smell a little _bit_ too much like the sea," he said. "It becomes a little irritating when in a closed room with you, to be honest." 

"—Seriously?" 

"Other people shouldn't notice. Our senses have been sharper than most." Atsumu was grumbling a little, perhaps bitter about the fact that Osamu beat him into explaining, or maybe it was entirely something else that Hinata just couldn't comprehend right now. "It's probably in our bloodline—or maybe just because we have been raised and trained from childhood to be our father's successors." 

"Not that you're planning to succeed him," Osamu grumbled back. "Stop playing around if you want your inheritance." 

"That shitty old man can give it to you for all I care. I'm outta here once I'm old enough." 

"You're really just one giant bag of turd, aren't you—" 

" _Anyway_ ," Hinata raised his voice slightly, sensing that the twins were about to get into another fight, "so… what…" 

"Well, how do we start?" Atsumu wondered aloud, and then frowned at his brother thoughtfully. 

"What about having Hinata tell us his story, first?" Osamu suggested. 

"Sounds good. How about a crack at it, huh, Hinata-kun?" 

"Er…" 

"I know we're nosing," Atsumu said, as sweetly as a cat, "but you don't have to feel compelled to tell us if you're not comfortable. Really." 

"And if you do tell us…" Osamu glanced sideways at his brother and back to Hinata once more. "'Tsumu is a loudmouth, but I guess he's not a tattletale." 

"Hey. Say that with a little more conviction, dammit." 

"Shan't." 

"You—" 

"It's— It's not my secret to tell," Hinata faltered, his gaze falling to his lap, and the twins turned to stare at him at the same time. 

"Okay, I understand." Atsumu smiled. "But would it be fine for _me_ to tell _you_ a story, instead?" 

"A story?" 

"Oh, something of an old fairy tale. If you _have_ heard of it before, please do tell me." Atsumu glanced at Osamu, who seemed to have sunk back into reticence, and when Hinata timidly nodded, he finally started his story— 

"Once upon a time, there lived a farmer, and he had a beautiful wife, and three sons." 

* * *

"Daichi. I think we have a problem." 

At his mate's tone of voice, Sawamura Daichi found himself already sighing; in what was almost two millennia of being together, he had learned that Sugawara has two ways of saying that exact same sentence, and while one kind meant "The kids have gotten themselves into trouble again," the other kind meant "Drop everything and pay attention to me right now"—which was definitely the case for this one. He maneuvered himself around in the water with a twitch of his powerful russet tail, his worried eyes quickly taking in the way his mate looked right now. Sugawara usually paid immaculate attention to his appearance, but the deep shadows under his eyes and the dullness of his usually-glowing scales told Daichi that this was nothing normal. 

"Which of the kids was it?" 

"Kageyama. I can't find him anywhere. Not even his usual spots. I—" 

"Kageyama?" Daichi found himself scowling slightly at the unexpected name that fell from Sugawara's lips. Kageyama was the youngest and also the most recent member of their shoal, having been adopted into the fold not even a few months ago. He proved to be cold and he almost always kept to himself, but with the rowdier members of the shoal already occupying almost fifty percent of Daichi's mind with their antics, Kageyama's more mature demeanor was actually a welcome thing. The kindlier Sugawara almost always ended up being the one to herd Kageyama in when he gets in trouble—which was not very often and not very severely, until today. 

"I'll have everyone look around for him. When did you last see him? Where did you check already?" 

"Probably three nights ago. I've already checked the ships' graveyard, the shoal cave near the island, the barrier reef in the waters around Saikai—" 

Sugawara's face was indescribable throughout Daichi's inquisition, and it was only with a gentle kiss on the mark under his eye that Daichi finally let him go. "We'll find him, Koushi," he reassured him, and when Sugawara managed a weak smile back, his eyes lighting up, Daichi finally thought it was fine to swim away, his strokes powerful against the current. 

_"Hey, Daichi-san, was it true that you were a priest once and Suga-san just seduced you into leaving your sacred post or something?"_

Tanaka had asked this extremely tactless question about two centuries back, when he had just been accepted into the shoal and didn't know any better. Shimizu and Asahi had seemed extremely put-out by this question, but Daichi himself had just laughed out loudly. "Well, there's no denying that I was very lucky to have caught Koushi's eye," he had answered back then, "but it's been so long since we first met that I can't even tell when or how it all started." 

(It was half a lie. Daichi probably remembered everything as clearly as Sugawara did.) 

Sugawara was as tight-lipped and vague in his answers as he was, though everyone knew that the older ningyo had a longer and more perfect memory; it was often so with pureblooded youkai. His bloodline and age were apparently so impressive as to attract a great range of strange and fantastic suitors from both land and sea, but around Daichi, Sugawara seemed to take great care not to display anything more impressive than lulling Tanaka and Nishinoya to sleep just by humming a song, and thus his image of Sugawara had been confined to what he can see everyday, instead of the magnified myth that had been hounding his mate for the past thousand years. 

The very first members of their shoal, Asahi and Shimizu, were also pureblooded, though their reasons for joining the shoal were vastly different; as though feeling Daichi's persistent yearning for his human family, Sugawara had taken them in one after the other, his pale arms always wide and outstretched to the lost and his gray eyes always soft and gentle, except when he tries to outmaneuver the kids' pranks with mischief of his own. Even after all of this time, Daichi had to marvel at the fact that Sugawara remained as childlike and wild as he had been when they first started this relationship—or perhaps he was like this because he had eaten and drunk and breathed in the sea all of his life, and had thus remained sea-like: That is, unchanging, and volatile, and breathtakingly beautiful. 

But even though Daichi's memory had been eroded bit by bit over the course of time, his clearest memory of Sugawara's first meeting with him were his innocently cruel words. 

_"Aren't you going to die, yet?"_

He _had_ honestly thought that Sugawara Koushi was a shinigami back then during the huge famine that killed off his entire village; and it wasn't until they met again and again, over the course of a few weeks then months then years, that Daichi found out that Sugawara was actually… something that was simultaneously better _and_ worse than a shinigami. 

_"It's very ironic,"_ Sugawara would say for centuries after Daichi's metamorphosis, _"to turn someone with your name into a ningyo."_

_"But, Suga, even some ningyo love returning to land a little too much."_

A ghost of a smile at Daichi's little jab. _"—D'you think you're being clever by saying that?"_

To Daichi's brand new eyes, Sugawara's beauty resembled the stormclouds, and the tempestuous waves. He reminded him of the long rain, after the endless draught. 

_"Hey, Suga. Why did you choose me?"_

—Sugawara was the creature who breathed new life into him. 

_"That's where you're wrong. I didn't choose you, Daichi."_

_"Then what?"_

_"You wished for me,"_ Sugawara Koushi had said, simply, and his smile was the ocean, and the ocean was life. _"And the ocean deemed it fit to grant your wish. That is all."_

—Despite the churning worry in his gut at his youngest child's disappearance, Daichi had to smile at the memory. 

The other members of the shoal treated Kageyama's disappearance with varying levels of worry; Nishinoya seemed convinced that Kageyama had just gone and lost himself into the great coral forest where the younger ningyo liked to play ("Remember that time when Ryuu and Asahi-san went missing for three days and turns out they had shot through that forest and accidentally entered the lair of some sirens—" "They were beautiful, but not as beautiful as our own Kiyoko-san!" "T-They almost t-tried _eating_ us!") while Asahi, on the other hand, posited that Kageyama might have had a run-in with one of the warships circling the peninsula ("T-Those things are going to kill one of us sooner or later, Daichi—" "It's quite difficult to kill a ningyo like that, Asahi. Calm down." "BUT. BOMBS."). And while each and every one of their speculations may be possible, Daichi earnestly hoped that Asahi was wrong and that Kageyama _hadn't_ actually gotten himself captured or killed or—or worse, _eaten_ by one of the hard-faced marines aboard those gray ships. 

All of them spread out when Daichi gave the word, and Daichi himself had to start covering the spots that Sugawara hadn't mentioned yet. If he had remembered Sugawara's words correctly over the past few weeks, Kageyama had been sneaking onto the shores of the mainland as well—a clever, though risky, place to play in, because none of his other kin would have dared go near land at such a dangerous time like this. Daichi had to wrack his brains for the last time in the past few years when he actually visited the shore— _Almost never, really,_ he thought to himself, with a melancholic twitch of the eyebrow. Somehow, he had not particularly missed the land, especially after his lifetime of suffering on it. 

"Kageyama?" 

He called out the name multiple times whenever he reached a likely location, and was disappointed every time—he had even accidentally broached another shoal's territory, though Iwaizumi seemed more understanding than his mate when Daichi quickly explained the situation to them. 

"By the way, Sawamura. You guys should vacate the waters around the peninsula while you still can," Iwaizumi said as a parting word of caution. "The moment you see that kid of yours, grab him and make a run for it. We're leaving past nightfall, ourselves." 

"Is it…" Daichi murmured, his brows drawing together, and Iwaizumi nodded. 

"Sugawara must have sensed it as well—that guy's the second best clairvoyant around these waters. No match for our Tooru, of course"—his mate assumed a mightily smug air at this—"so if I were you… start evacuating before the end of the week. Before those humans start wreaking their havoc amongst themselves." 

"But Kageyama…" 

Oikawa snorted, flicking his magnificent turquoise tail disdainfully. "Tobio is a stupid little brat," he sniffed, "and if I hadn't been so merciful, I'd have cuffed him soundly around the head the first time he went up to the cove along _our_ side of the peninsula—" 

"Stop talking trash about Miwa's brother, you," Iwaizumi snapped. 

"Well, Kageyama Miwa was also a brat, if I'm not mistaken, barging into other shoals' territories as she damn well pleased—" 

"Everyone younger than you is a brat as far as you're concerned, huh?" Iwaizumi was sighing, but then Daichi had just realized what disturbed him about Oikawa's statements. 

"Er, Oikawa-san? You mentioned a cove on your side of the peninsula that Kageyama has visited—" 

"Uh huh. Saw him swimming from that direction a few times. Never even bothered asking us for permission to fish there." Oikawa looked plenty irritated at having to bring up his recollections of it, but Daichi was a father of sorts, and all worry was giving him the pluck he needed. 

"Sorry, but please give me permission to search along your beaches." 

"As if! What, d'you think—" 

"Granted," Iwaizumi said flatly, and when Oikawa started to protest, he added, "Shut it, Tooru. You know you'd do the same if there was the remotest possibility that some of _our_ young 'uns were wandering around in Sawamura's turf." 

"Iwa-chan—" 

"Drop it." Iwaizumi's tone was final. "Go, Sawamura. You owe us one, though." 

Oikawa glared, huffing, and when Daichi gave him a sheepish smile, he looked away petulantly, as if saying _"I don't know anything if I didn't see anything,"_ which perhaps was the closest thing to permission he would be willing to give. Relieved, Daichi inclined his head deeply in deference to the two other ningyo and quickly swam away, his chest lighter at the promise of the good news that Sugawara was searching for. 

* * *

When Tsukishima Kei swung by the conservation lab the morning after they received the pearl hairpin, he had been half-expecting Yamaguchi Tadashi to be there ahead of him once more, as was his wont. 

He certainly was there, though Tsukishima wasn't certainly expecting to see him so—so _disgustingly_ excited. It wasn't even that Yamaguchi was jumping all over the place or anything; in fact, the only thing he was visibly doing was pore over some papers on his usual chair, but Tsukishima wasn't fooled—to the experienced eye of a childhood friend, Yamaguchi was practically vibrating with tension.

"What're you doing?" he asked pointedly as he deposited the usual two cups of coffee beside the laptop (today, it was playing some catchy rock song that he silently approved of). Yamaguchi, who had evidently been doing his best to hold himself together until his colleague arrived, immediately spun around and almost smacked a page into Tsukishima's glasses. 

Scowling, Tsukishima grabbed the papers before Yamaguchi could actually knock his glasses off. "Can you keep your hands to yourself?" he asked, vaguely irritated, and straightened the crumpled papers so that he can read them. In the corner of his eye, he noticed that Yamaguchi was also examining a small wooden box that evidently came with the mail. "What is this, anyway?" 

"It's that report that you requested from Ennoshita-san yesterday. Just, just read it first, Tsukki," Yamaguchi gasped out. "Then, I'll give you this other thing that arrived in the mail, and then, and then— Oh, god. I don't know. I think I'm actually shaking." 

To his small satisfaction, Tsukishima's eyes got marginally wider and wider as they traveled down the document. When he finally got to the bottom, he looked over the top of the page to lock eyes with Yamaguchi, who was grinning from ear to ear. 

"That hairpin has a pearl that's _two hundred years old_ , Tsukki," Yamaguchi was saying. "With that kind, size, and color, if you sold it at auction, you'd be set for the next six or so months." 

"I think you're conveniently forgetting that we're working as curators, and that we can't just _sell_ pieces off, Yamaguchi, that's fraud—" 

"I just meant it hypothetically…" 

"— _If_ you're somehow trying to imply from that statement that you're broke until our next paycheck," Tsukishima interrupted, finally cottoning on, "then fine, I'll lend you lunch money." 

"Thanks, Tsukki." A bashful smile. 

"Okay. So now that we've established that the hairpin is possibly worth hundreds of thousands of yen," Tsukishima sighed, "what's in that box?" 

Yamaguchi grinned, and then lifted the cover of the wooden box. Tsukishima peered in, not quite understanding at first sight why Yamaguchi was so excited, because what lay inside was… just a child's doll. 

He pulled on some gloves and lifted it gently out of the box, noting the extreme shabbiness and wear on the toy—and then, one by one, he started to note some other details. 

"Sixty, seventy years?" he murmured, and Yamaguchi nodded. 

It was also handmade, much like the pearl hairpin, though the doll was misshapen and clearly made by more inexperienced hands; perhaps sewn by a child, even. It was in the shape of a boy, with dark fabric hair and dark button eyes and a clumsily stitched mouth that gave it a rather unhappy expression, and it was clothed in a piece of what was an extremely faded piece of blue cotton, cut and sewn to look like a small kimono. 

What did pique his interest from distant curiosity to intrigue was the fact that, instead of legs— 

—What peeked out from under the hem of the kimono was a single black fishtail. 

_A, ningyo doll—?_

"It came with this long letter, Tsukki." Yamaguchi handed over ten pages of writing paper, and Tsukishima's eye twitched slightly as he glanced down at it. "Well, if you can call it a letter— Actually, the first five pages contain a folk tale of sorts, and the other five pages would be the letter itself, but—" 

"Let me see." 

Tsukishima glanced down the page, and to his slight confusion, read: 

_Once upon a time, there lived a farmer, and he had a beautiful wife, and three sons.—_


	7. loneliness and time

_ Once upon a time, there lived a farmer, and he had a beautiful wife, and three sons.  _

_ This farmer was honest and hardworking, and he turned his land into silver, and turned the silver into more land. Where other men would spend their coppers in gambling, the farmer and his wife would displace a new mat on their floor and hide the silver away in the ground, to buy land, and more land that will bring forth life. And thus, they grew more and more prosperous as time passed.  _

_ This prudent farmer's three sons were as alike and different to each other as the sun, moon, and stars. The eldest son was robust and strong, and raised from an early age to take the yoke of working the land after his father's death. The second son was slight and keen-eyed, and was sent to school to learn how to account for the grain that his father sold in the markets. And the third son was but a child yet, as slight and pale as a cherry blossom, and was thus not yet suited to responsibility of any kind.  _

_ All three were so fair-faced and faultless that the farmer deemed them a blessing, each and every one, and in this matter was he also fortunate once and twice and thrice over.  _

_ For seasons and seasons, the farmer's land yielded and brought forth fruit, and thus the farmer was blessed by the gods of the earth. Soon, with the newfound respect that he has begotten from his prosperity, he became respected as a reliable authority on all kinds of matters, and neighbors whispered behind their doors and deigned to call him something of a landlord. And he was just and fair, even, careful in judgment whenever he was called upon to settle a dispute between tenants of his land, and everyone desired his favor.  _

_ It soon came to pass that he settled a dispute between two fishmongers who had been bitter rivals in the market for as long as everyone knew them. Upon ruling that one was righteous over the other, the fishmonger who had lost the dispute took this decision deeply in heart, and vowed for revenge upon his enemy and the farmer who had ultimately cast the decision.  _

_ One fine morning, a man from the neighboring village came bearing a highly unusual fish, and tried selling it to the fishmonger for an exceedingly high price. In all his years, the fishmonger had never seen such beautiful colors as those that played upon the scales of this fish, and happily purchased it on the spot.  _

_ However, when his wife was about to cut the meat up, she saw that the fish her husband purchased had the face of a human. Fearing for the folly of bringing the creature into their home, she pressured the fishmonger to send it to their worst enemy instead, or else a curse might enter their doorstep and all will be lost.  _

_ Thus did one half of the meat of this fantastic fish find its way into the house of the farmer. Unsuspecting, the farmer's wife received the meat gratefully and cooked it, intending to eat it for supper. Once done, she left the food to cool, and went to call her sons.  _

_ Whilst she was occupied, her eldest son entered the backdoor of the kitchen, fresh from work at the fields, and found the enticing dish where his mother left it. Suspecting nothing and starving from the healthy work, he consumed it innocently, marveling at the taste of the flesh and the strength it gave back to his worn body.  _

_ Days passed, and the fickleness of the gods manifested itself once more when the rain that the farmer had been so expecting failed to arrive. Soon, even the rice plants that the eldest son was so carefully tending had to stand in dry paddies, their heads bowed against the harsh sunlight, and when it was clear that no more water was to be had, they stayed green and unyielding, then slowly shriveled away into brown husks. Over acres and acres of the farmer's lands, as well as those of neighboring villages, began to suffer from this curse.  _

_ The farmer would day after day yell at the sun to stop shining, and soon, there was no longer food to be had for his family, and his wife was great with another child and he had other mouths to feed besides, and he cursed this great reversal of luck that just had to happen when he was at the peak of his good fortune. His sons were scarecrows, the littlest one dying, and his wife reluctantly accepted the very last of their stores and ate, because she was eating for two now.  _

_ One by one, they ate everything that was to be eaten in the house.  _

_ On the first of his last days on earth, the farmer butchered their final ox and ground the very bones into soup.  _

_ On the third of his last days on earth, the farmer killed his eldest son's dog and hung the skin to dry for bedding.  _

_ On his last day on earth, the farmer had to look up and tell his eldest son, "Here is where I'd like to be buried."  _

_ One by one, the earth reclaimed all of the farmer's family back into its breast.  _

_ One by one—except for the eldest son, who had consumed the strange meat of the fish.  _

_ He starved and he starved, and still he did not die—an existence that was half-living, half-dead. Without anything to eat, he found his way borrowing his father's fishing pole to go all the way to the ocean, determining that if he should die, he should die walking.  _

_ The farmer's son starved and stumbled and finally crawled all the way to the sea, and even though the people there had also picked the waters clean into barrenness, with nothing daring to move into the reach of the desperate humans living on the shore, he sat on the very edge of the pier, and waited and waited and waited…  _

_ "Aren't you going to die, yet?" _

* * *

With his back on the sand like this and his eyes turned to the vast ceiling of stars overhead, it was easy to fool himself that the sea didn't exist. For the moment. 

"Hey, gremlin." 

Kageyama Tobio rolled to his side on the sand, and addressed the young girl who was now seated on the sand and surveying him with huge, glass-like eyes that made one think of the endless warmth of summer. 

"Isn't your mother already looking for you?" 

Hinata Natsu stuck out her tongue, which made Kageyama's eye twitch a little with annoyance. "I snuck out. Nii-chan and Mom are already asleep." 

"You… you sure have some guts for a kid your age." 

"I'm  _ six _ ." 

"Your point being…?" 

Natsu frowned at him, and Kageyama glared back. 

"—Why isn't Nii-chan going here to talk to you anymore?" 

That hit him across the face like a slap. He tore his gaze away, his glare melting into an expression that was immeasurably both angry and sorrowful. Natsu just watched him innocently, face free from the cloud of judgment, and Kageyama found himself murmuring, "I don't think you'll understand." 

"I'm already six." 

"That's definitely not something that'll impress me even if you repeat it a thousand times, you do know that, right?" 

"But! What I do understand is…" Natsu looked down at her toes and played with the string of the pouch that she had brought with her. "When he got back the other day from the shrine, Nii-chan was very sad." 

"If he's sad, he's free to come back here," Kageyama retorted bitterly. "It's not like I'm going anywhere…" 

"Is that why you've been hanging around here like you said?" Natsu's disturbingly insightful expression. "Are you waiting for Nii-chan to come back?" 

Are you waiting for the opportunity to apologize? The unspoken question hung in the air between them, but Kageyama wasn't sure if he was ready to answer that part out loud. 

"I'm waiting," Kageyama merely echoed her, and Natsu beamed at him before opening her pouch and suddenly bringing out scissors and a piece of cloth. "Wait, what are you doing?" 

"Making a present for Nii-chan." Natsu started snipping parts of the cloth as Kageyama stared, confused. "It's supposed to be top secret, so don't tell him, 'kay?" 

"It's not like we're currently talking or anything," was the glum reply. 

"But Nii-chan likes Tobio." Natsu laughed happily as Kageyama's face and neck turned an interesting shade of pink, and continued cutting her cloth. "We're moving away by the end of summer. D'you know that?" 

"Yeah. That dumbass told me as much before." It seemed like yesterday, but perhaps it had been such a long time ago, too, Kageyama realized with slight shock. He still clearly remembered the map that Hinata had shown him—the location of Karumai, a valley nestled among numerous mountains. He wondered just how much time has elapsed since then—measuring time was definitely not one of a ningyo's strong suits. "So what has that got to do with what you're doing now?" 

"This is so that even when we go away from you, he doesn't get as lonely." Natsu drew a piece of paper from her pouch and presented it proudly to the ningyo. "Look—Isn't it pretty?" 

"I'm not really sure what I'm looking at—" 

"Doll patterns. Mom drew them up for me before." 

"And that's going to make Hinata less lonely how…?" 

"I'm making a doll of  _ you _ ! Though, you don't have legs like the pattern does, so I need to make it a little differently." Natsu stuck her tongue out in concentration as she continued snipping. "I'm saving up the azuki beans in my toy beanbags to stuff it with." 

Kageyama didn't know how to react to the knowledge, so he settled with a feeble, "Looks difficult." 

"I'll do my best!" 

Kageyama watched her work, an unbidden smile twitching at the corner of his mouth, and rolled back on his backside to continue watching the stars. 

After a few minutes of sleepy silence, Natsu broke the silence once more. 

"Do you know, Tobio? I still have the present you gave me." 

"Oh?" Kageyama cracked a devilish grin at the memory. "I hope you haven't shown it to anyone yet." 

"Nope! Not even to Nii-chan." The snipping sound of scissors. "…Will it really not work if I show it to anyone?" 

"I was just joking about that part—your brother was being an ass that time." Kageyama blinked owlishly at Natsu. "But you better not show it to anyone anyway, because they might take it from you. Humans like shiny stuff like that, don't they? My sister told me." 

"Oh…" Natsu frowned. "But does it really do what you said it does?" 

"Mmhmm. I would recommend you to only use it when you finally learn how to swim, though. It's certainly useless to you otherwise." 

"I brought it—maybe we can try it out right now!" Natsu suggested excitedly, and Kageyama rolled his eyes. 

"I just told you to learn how to swim first before you use it, idiot. Do you siblings have any brains in your skulls at all?" 

"But—"

" _ Besides _ ," Kageyama steamrolled over the rest of her sentence, "You can only use that thing three times at most. Ningyo magic is not strong enough to last when embedded in physical objects, so the pearl should be good for at least three tries before it disintegrates into dust… then you won't be able to use it anymore." 

"Oh…" 

"And simple spells like that are okay, but I'm  _ not _ letting you dabble with anything stronger than that, or you might find yourself waking up one morning with a fishtail instead of legs." 

"Really?" 

"Uh huh." 

"O, Okay. Three times it is." Natsu nodded nervously. "Got it." 

"Good girl. By the way…" Kageyama turned his attention back to the direction of the sky. "It's starting to get late, so maybe you should pack up, and let me sleep in peace." 

* * *

"Kageyama. Kageyama." 

"Mph—?" 

He was woken hours later by unexpectedly strong hands on his shoulders, and his eyes flew open in panic as he realized who the voice belonged to. Instinctively, he turned to check if Natsu had gone home, but Sawamura Daichi was faster, and the hands that forced him to stare back into worried brown eyes were sure and steady. Feeling his breath come out of his mouth in short bursts, he trusted that it was late enough for the child to have already gone back home, and he finally let himself relax in Daichi's grasp. 

"…Daichi-san." 

"I don't need a reason, Kageyama," Daichi told him sternly, "but Koushi and everyone else were so  _ worried _ ." 

"I'm… I'm sorry." And to his surprise, Kageyama found that he really  _ was _ sorry, in a way. The shoal had shown nothing but great kindness to him ever since he joined them. "Really, I'm…" 

"Come home, Kageyama." Daichi's eyes were dark and ghostly. "That Iwaizumi bade me to leave these waters as soon as I have you, and Iwaizumi is no fool." 

"Iwaizumi-san…" A bitter smile. "So you came into contact with  _ them _ ." 

"Yeah. They're how I knew where to find you." A sigh. "You really had no intention of making it easy for us, huh?" 

"But why do we have to leave?" Kageyama asked. "I—" 

"Kageyama, whether we are bad omens or not, the fact that every single ningyo in this area has been so antsy these past few days is no joke. I can see it in Sugawara's eyes at times, too. He's scared. He just doesn't know how to break it gently to us. But that's what I can help him with. I'm no stranger to delivering bad news." Daichi frowned. "I don't know what's coming, myself. But even if we're extremely hardy and nigh immortal, this will affect all of us in unimaginable ways, and I cannot just stand by and get our shoal into a mess—a mess caused by humans, no less—without doing something.  _ We have to leave. _ " 

Kageyama just stared at him, his dark eyes pinpricks of terror, and the ragged gasp that left his lips surprised even himself. 

"—No." 

"No? Kageyama—" 

"No. This is all wrong." Shaking his head. "It's all going to happen again." 

_ "Tobio! Run! You have to run!"  _

_ "Nee-san—don't be stupid—I can't leave you—"  _

_ "Run! Tobio!" _

Miwa had been crying in the past few minutes of her life. 

—Her tears probably tasted like seawater. 

She pushed him, hard, into an incoming wave that knocked him head over tail—

_ "Live!"  _

Seafoam— Miwa was— 

Nothing but seafoam. 

And there was a flash of light, and an explosion, and the unbelievable pain of something foreign and metal tearing through his gut— 

If they weren't supposed to be human at all, why is ningyo blood so  _ scarlet _ ? 

Someone nearby was screaming uncontrollably, and Kageyama slammed against something that knocked all of his breath out of his lungs— 

"KAGEYAMA! Look. At. Me." 

"—!" 

"It's fine. You're fine." Daichi. Daichi. Daichi. The present. The present. The present. "You're not alone. We're here, Kageyama. We're here—" 

"…They'll die, too. The same way Nee-san did. Those human toys— those  _ weapons _ —

"No, not die—they'll be  _ killed _ ." 

Daichi frowned. 

Kageyama's eyes. 

"—Sorry. Daichi-san. Sorry, Sugawara-san." 

—He was smiling, and the barefaced purity in that smile made Daichi's heart twinge. 

"I'll stay here, after all." 

"But why—" 

"Hinata. I can't leave him behind." 

Daichi froze. "You… and a human…" 

"He—" A bitterness. "It's my fault, Daichi-san. 

"The moment he tried saving my life, my blood cursed him into an everlasting life." 

Memories. The farmer's son remembers them all vividly. Daichi remembers them all vividly. 

_ "Aren't you going to die, yet?" _

The memories of the beautiful silver-haired boy who rescued him from his loneliness swirled painfully in his stomach, like a sweet dream. 

_ "Have you come to take me away?" _

The farmer's eldest son, who had accidentally partaken of the ningyo's flesh, of the curse of immortality, who wanted nothing else but to die. And to live. And to die, because living is loneliness, and loneliness kills from within. 

_ "No, not yet."  _

—It had taken him almost a hundred years of living as a human before Sugawara allowed the beautiful russet scales to grow on him. A hundred years of wandering around the archipelago, led by nothing but the music of the sea breeze and Sugawara's voice. 

_ "Take me with you."  _

_ "I'm not a shinigami. I'm something worse."  _

_ "I know. Maybe I knew a hundred years ago, from the moment we first met." _ The farmer's son smiled.  _ "But still, take me with you. Far away. Where loneliness and time cannot reach me at all." _

"Even if you aren't of one blood, you are… Koushi's, after all." 

Kageyama looked up, and met Daichi's eyes fearlessly. 

"I'm sorry." 

"Don't be. Recklessness has run in this family ever since Koushi and I met." A grin. "I keep forgetting that, huh?" 

"Daichi-san—" 

"If you can save one life, you shouldn't hesitate." Daichi finally let him go, and Kageyama sank sideways to his elbow in relief. "But we'll hang back till the last possible moment. We're waiting for you." 

A determined look. 

"Thank you. Daichi-san." 

"Don't die, Kageyama Tobio." 

"—I won't." Kageyama finally smiled a smile of happiness. "I'll come back to you. I promise." 

* * *

_ For one hundred years, the farmer's son traveled on foot and scavenged for food like a wandering pilgrim, watching the sun rise and set across the sky and lulled to sleep at night by the ocean. He never strayed far from the ocean, because when by the ocean he was never alone. The beautiful silver-haired ningyo followed him anywhere, almost as if he was curious to see if the newborn immortal beside him can interest him even further.  _

_ "Take me with you," he beseeched the ningyo one day.  _

_ "I can't." The ningyo smiled. "I'm not a shinigami. I'm something worse."  _

_ "I know. Maybe I knew a hundred years ago, from the moment we first met." _

_ The farmer's son smiled.  _

_ "But still, take me with you. Far away. Where loneliness and time cannot reach me at all."  _

_ "Your will to live. Your fear of death." The ningyo sighed. "As long as it is there, you shall never grow old."  _

_ "Then, so shall it be. I will live, forever and ever."  _

_ "It will be painful."  _

_ "I do not fear pain. Only loneliness."  _

_ "You really are—an unusual human."  _

_ —It is uncertain how or what happened after then, but one thing was certain for the villagers who knew the kind, wise, youthful pilgrim that had been wandering the shore.  _

_ He never appeared on land again after that, and how exactly it was that the ningyo claimed him for his own, no one will ever know.  _


	8. fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The image song for this chapter would be Uchiagehanabi (the Kenshi Yonezu solo version). You can listen to the full version [here](https://youtu.be/enPCUO_5ZrI) on Kenshi Yonezu's official YouTube channel! 

> _Don’t let go, don’t go away_ _  
> __Just a little longer_ _  
> __Let us stay like this_ _  
> __Just a little longer_
> 
> —[ **Uchiagehanabi** ](https://www.lyrical-nonsense.com/lyrics/daoko-x-kenshi-yonezu/uchiage-hanabi/#English), Kenshi Yonezu

_To you, seventy years in the future._

_The first thing that you have to know about me is that this is an extremely difficult letter for me to write, and you might have noticed a lot of crossings-out and mistakes in both the manuscript and this letter that you are reading right now. I hope you do not attribute the mistakes to any clumsiness of mine; it is just that I find myself going back on my words so many times that my hand is having great difficulty writing this entire thing out neatly._

_As I am writing this letter, I am currently in K_ _██████_ _, at the very northern tip of M_ _█████_ _. It is quite different from my quaint childhood hometown back in N_ _███████_ _. My father’s family traces their roots here; if you search the admittedly small town library, you’ll find that my family name does go quite a ways back, perhaps even back before the Meiji Era._

_I am rambling; I really am hesitant to start this letter. I probably would stuff this letter in my dresser after writing it and hide it until I forget; but to put it in writing is a must. I need to know that I have poured out all of my anguish and yearning in these pages and rest that one of my descendants, perhaps, would find this and know about the history of the family that they have been born in._

_Or maybe I wouldn’t have descendants at all, because apparently the old curse that started in my generation may continue until someone decides to end this chain of sorrow._

_█████ █████████ ███████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███ ████████ ████ █████████ ████ █████████ █████████ ████ █████████ █████████ ████ █████████ █████████ ████ █████████ . P█████████ █████████_

_Sorry. Again, I have drifted off._

_Let me start all over, and introduce two basic premises to you, seventy years in the future._

_Premise number one: Ningyo are mythical creatures of the sea._

_Premise number two: Ningyo are real. They exist._

_How do I know this, you ask?_

_—I have already met_ _████ ██████_ _one such creature in the past._

* * *

"Shouyou, can you help Natsu dress up now and chaperone her to the shrine later? I need to go ahead to help out with the preparations for Tachikawa-san's stand." 

"Ah, yeah, okay. Take care, Mom!" 

"Thank you, Shouyou. Nacchan, follow your brother at all times, okay? I'm going." 

—The sound of the front door sliding shut. 

"Natsu?" 

"Here!" 

Following the cry, Hinata Shouyou entered Natsu's room and found his little sister, already in her blue yukata and struggling a little with her obi, which was a bright contrasting yellow. Her futile attempts to tie the obi at the back made him smile slightly, and he moved forward. 

"Let me, Natsu. Here, hold your yukata together properly—" 

Natsu handed the ends of the obi over to him and he carefully wrapped the obi three times around her waist before tying it in the back in a neat bow, making sure to make it as big as Natsu instructed him, and even tried to tame her hair with a comb after the exercise was done. After a few fruitless attempts at flattening Natsu's curls, he had to give up and braid her short hair into two miniscule pigtails that he secured with the new flower pins that Mom bought just the week before. 

"What kind of flowers are these, Nii-chan?" Natsu asked, admiring the tiny white blossoms adorning her hair on the mirror. 

"Willows, I think." Hinata Shouyou remembered the willow tree in the schoolyard; the flowers must have fallen off long ago, maybe around two weeks into the summer. "The girls in my class used to make flower crowns and things out of them during breaks." 

"Mm. Oh!" Natsu, apparently satisfied about her appearance for now, lost interest in the mirror and beamed up at her brother. "Before we head to the festival, I actually have something to give you. I finished it just in time!" 

"What are you up to?" Hinata asked, slightly bemused as Natsu dug in the small bag that she usually carried around with her and pulled out a small parcel, wrapped in what looked like last week's newspaper. Hinata let his eyes wander absently on the headline (something about an air raid in Toyama City, miles up north), before finally unfolding the paper to expose the contents. 

"Natsu… this is…" 

"You said you wanted to take Tobio to the festival, so here you go," Natsu chirped, face glowing at the expression of utter surprise on her brother's face. "And like this, you can also take him to Karumai when we leave!" 

"I, this—" Hinata was speechless, torn between staring at Natsu's gift and responding appropriately to her thoughtfulness. The Tobio-doll lay quiet in his hands, the frown on its little face uncannily reminiscent of the real one, and despite his conflicting emotions, he had to bite back a laugh at his little sister's unexpected attention to detail. 

"What d'you think?" 

"Th-thank you," Hinata said, and to his surprise, his words rang out sincerely. "I—you didn't have to, Natsu." 

"But I want to make you smile again," she pouted, pointing the mirror at him, and Hinata had to acknowledge that the small grin on his reflection was real. "Tobio didn't believe me when I said I will." 

"You talked with Kageyama?" This was another surprise. Hinata looked up, and Natsu probably saw the question in his face, because she grinned mischievously. 

"I sewed the doll in our secret place, and he kind of helped me finish it bit by bit whenever I went there. Look, he even gave me the finishing touches." Natsu pointed at the Tobio-doll, and Hinata finally noticed the minuscule shard of sapphire on its forehead. "Isn't it pretty?" 

Hinata swallowed the sudden emotion in his throat. 

"Thank you," he repeated. "You're the best sister in the whole world." 

Natsu flushed brightly at the praise. 

"Then," she said, "Make up with Tobio already, won't you?" 

"Okay." Hinata beamed at his sister. "I did promise him I'd bring him food and other curiosities from the festival, so…" 

They emerged from the house at twilight, when the fireflies are starting to drift across the river like so many little lights, and both siblings feasted their eyes at the golden trail of lanterns that led from their street and up on the Miya shrine at the top of the hill. Hinata can hear a distant don-don-don of the drums, guiding visitors to the center of the festival by sound. Beside him, Natsu had put her hand in his larger one and was walking obediently along, her wooden sandals making clopping noises on the ground. 

"I wonder if Izumin and Koji are already there," Hinata wondered out loud. "What do you want to do first?" 

"Goldfish scooping," Natsu said without much thought, and then giggled. "Oh, but will Tobio get angry if you bring him fish?" 

"He’d probably mistake the goldfish for a snack or something and eat it," Hinata said in mock horror. "Okay, goldfish scooping it is, but keep it for me, would you?" 

Natsu vocalized her approval of the plan, and they continued walking, listening to the drums and making a contest out of counting the lanterns that they passed. Hinata found himself looking surreptitiously at the gradual metamorphosis of the quiet town into a butterfly spectacle of its own, with the brightly-dressed girls and the young men in their smartest attire. 

—Even when everything is at its darkest, Hinata mused with a small smile, humans will always find ways to create light. 

"Don't you think so, Kageyama?" he whispered to the doll tucked neatly in his yukata and next to his heart, peeking out slightly into the wide world. 

—Tobio-doll didn't answer, of course, as dolls were wont to do, but Hinata privately thought that his little frown spoke volumes. 

* * *

"Tsukki, are you already at the bus stop?" 

"Yeah." Tsukishima Kei checked his watch and frowned lightly; the 6am bus was already quite near. "You really should hurry up, or we'll miss the bus." 

"I know, I know. I'm nearly there." Yamaguchi Tadashi sounded slightly frazzled, and his tone sounded weird—probably power-walking while on the phone, Tsukishima noted with an ironic grin. "So you don't recognize them at all? I mean, the sender of the items?" 

"Not at all. According to the letter, they sent the items to me because they were acquainted with my brother way back, and he mentioned in passing that I worked at the museum. They said they wanted my professional opinion on something concerning the stuff they sent." 

"And does Akiteru-san really?" 

"Yeah, I confirmed that with him. But Nii-san apparently couldn't or wouldn't tell them my address, so they just went ahead and sent it to the Conservation Center." Tsukishima huffed a little in irritation. "Talk about something that could have _easily_ gone wrong… though, I guess every parcel passes through our hands, anyway. But still. What a reckless person." 

"Tsukki. Do you really believe what they wrote in the letter? That ningyo are real?" 

"Impossible." Tsukishima’s voice was dripping with scorn. "I’m just going because it’s a rare opportunity to interview someone who’s survived such an incident. I’m more concerned about the historical rather than the mythological aspect of all of this." 

"Thought so. But… I wonder why send the items to a curator." 

"That's what we're going to find out, aren't we?" Tsukishima said impassively, and snapped his phone shut as his partner came running up to him in the flesh, clutching a stitch at his side. "By the way, just in time. There's the bus pulling up." 

"Thank goodness," Yamaguchi gasped as the both of them finally boarded and settled into a seat. "So, where do we find this person?" 

"I called them yesterday. They gave me this address." 

Tsukishima handed him the slip of paper, and Yamaguchi frowned at the rather unexpected location written in his friend's neat script: 

_Room 607, Sendai Medical Center._

* * *

"Hot, hot!" 

Hinata huffed and puffed as he took a big mouthful of freshly-cooked takoyaki, which he immediately regretted; beside him, Natsu patted the bag that contained her new goldfish with an adoring look in her eyes—they had wasted at least five scoops before finally getting this one. 

"I wonder if Tobio knew someone with a golden tail," she asked quite seriously, and Hinata swallowed his food with streaming eyes. 

"Maybe I'll ask him later," he said absently, and Natsu beamed at him. 

They walked around the shrine grounds for some time, trying out wonderful delicacies and buying useless and pretty trinkets; on the way, Hinata got Natsu a small fox mask, which she proceeded to wear on the right side of her head, and they also got some small animal figurines from a ring-toss game that Hinata was surprisingly good at. Natsu’s favorite, the blue popsicles, were also being sold; Hinata bought one for his baby sister, who generously let him have a bite of the sweet, cold stuff. They even ran into Izumi and Koji at different times during the evening; both were keen to invite Hinata into games of their own, but the latter only smiled apologetically and excused himself. They also found Mom, helping out at Tachikawa Yakitori; Hinata had wanted to help, but Mom insisted on the two of them having fun today. 

"After my shift ends, I’ll play with you two," she promised, and brother and sister grinned their identical sunny grins back at her. 

Hinata supposed that the festival was much rowdier and funner for him this year compared to the others in the past, even though the atmosphere surrounding the town was much grimmer than it had been ever since the war had started; the Tobio-doll tucked into his chest was warm, too, and he once again wondered what the real Kageyama would think had he been present to witness these lively sights. 

"Hinata-kun!" Miya Atsumu waved at him when he caught Hinata’s eye once; for once, he had seemed to forgo his usual strange fusion of Western and traditional clothing and was wearing a proper full-length gray yukata. Osamu was nowhere to be found, though Hinata supposed he was helping out at the Miya family’s own food stand somewhere nearer to the shrine. "And is that your…" 

"My sister, Natsu." Hinata tried to push Natsu forward, but she shyly hung behind him, her big eyes trained on Atsumu’s genial features. "—Sorry. She’s rather temperamental around strangers." 

"No matter. Nice to meet you, Natsu-chan." A bright and quick smile, and then Atsumu turned back to Hinata. "I’ll see you around, Hinata-kun. Try our onigiri! We grow the rice on our own land." 

"Sure thing." 

"Weird person," Natsu mumbled, watching Atsumu’s gray back as it disappeared into the glittering crowd. 

"You think so, Natsu?" 

"Mmhmm."

"Heh. —I see." 

Hinata's face was unusually pensive. 

* * *

_Over and over, I have wracked my still-vivid memories of the past few years, and that final summer evening that I had spent with all of the people I loved most in the world has always been the most brilliant of them all; charming and astounding, and smelling faintly of flowers and smoke._

_This tale is almost over, but I will make sure it does not end sorrowfully, and that I want you, and only you, to understand. Why I had picked you out of all the people in the world to relate this story to, I am still not entirely sure—but I need to share this to someone before I finally let death take me._

_I have already lived a lengthy life._

_Too long a life, for some. But that one afternoon when I first saw_ _████████ █████_ _emerge from the sea, wrapped in silk and sapphire, shaking the water out of his hair, will never be matched by any other moment in my history._

_Even as I write this letter in this featureless white room, I can see his form clearly in my mind whenever I close my eyes and stop all time—half-human, half-fish, and wholly mysterious._

_—This tale is not yet over. I assure you of that._

_Not yet, because as long as fate has not yet returned what he has taken from me—I will do my best to live, and live, and live._

_—I will live, and continue living, this second life that_ _████████ █████_ _has so mercilessly bequeathed me. I will live, because that is the curse that meeting him has brought upon me._

* * *

Shaking off Mom was, to Hinata’s pleasant surprise, infinitely easier when Natsu was in the plan as well. He found himself slinking off in peace just minutes after Natsu successfully distracted their mother into looking the other way, and he picked his way through the crowd, snagging various food items here and there to stash into his bag. Tobio-doll watched the proceedings with total silence, prompting Hinata to amuse himself with the thought that Tobio-doll was probably too hungry to talk anyway. 

The beach was perfectly empty when he finally found himself there, everyone having been preoccupied with the festive goings-on up at the hill, and Hinata was able to easily sneak into the usual crevice in the rocks. Emerging to the other side, Hinata found himself drinking in the familiar salt breeze, and the melody of the gentle waves as they washed against the sand sounded like home. 

"—Hinata?" 

—He looked up, sand still on his elbows and knees, and the first glimpse he took of Kageyama took his breath away. 

He thought that this was the most enchanting his friend had ever looked, so far. Kageyama Tobio was lounging on his usual tabletop rock nearest the shore, his skin looking paler than ever when compared against the kimono he was wearing—a sea-silk fabric dyed with the color of faintly iridescent mother-of-pearl, and held together by an obi made of rich purple cloth. His hair was adorned with a single large pearl on the very middle of his forehead, and the tips of his tail, which in the darkness looked almost like living onyx stretched across the rock, only glistening with silver whenever the moonlight touched it, was dipping ever so slightly into the midnight-colored waves. 

His face was frozen in a perfect expression of both shock and happiness, and Hinata thought that, rather than a ningyo, the creature before him now was more like a water spirit from the depths of the sea—terrible and beguiling, and almost like smoke. 

After a lengthy moment where all he did was take in the ningyo's ghostly appearance, Hinata finally found his voice. 

"—Kageyama. I—" 

"I'm starving, dumbass. What took you so long?" was the gruff reply, and the illusion instantly broke; color bloomed over Kageyama's pallor, and suddenly he was a living, breathing creature, more human than ningyo, and above all— 

—Hinata's strangest friend in all the world. 

"Look, I brought you a ton of good things to eat," Hinata announced, almost cheerfully, and Kageyama snorted. 

"You're slow. Come over here already." 

Obligingly, Hinata waded over in the cool chest-deep water to Kageyama's rock, holding his purchases aloft to avoid them getting wet, and the ningyo slid his tail more fully into the water to make room; the movement was so graceful that it barely splashed Hinata. When he had hoisted himself up on the rock and found a comfortable position, he nudged the bag toward Kageyama. 

"Here. You can have anything that you want." 

Kageyama delicately poked through the food items in the bag, and Hinata was irresistibly reminded of the outcome of the first bet that Kageyama made against him—the way the ningyo carefully sifted through Hinata's possessions as though he was looking through curiosities, instead of mere everyday objects. The yellow diamond that had been on his hair then, flashing every time it caught the light. 

—Hinata silently swore to himself when he found his cheeks heating up yet again. 

"Hey, you eat too." Kageyama placed the bag on Hinata’s lap, scowling slightly. "It’s kind of awkward to eat alone." 

"Oh, yeah." Hinata smiled regretfully. "Sorry I couldn’t get you a blue popsicle. I bet you haven’t had ice cream before." 

"Well, I haven’t had a lot of this stuff before, really," Kageyama was mumbling through a mouthful of taiyaki—Hinata watched with some amusement as the fish-shaped pastry slowly disappeared in the ningyo’s mouth head-first. "This is so sweet—" 

"Try the karaage next," Hinata suggested, handing out the named food item, and Kageyama made a face as he tasted the chicken. 

"Ugh, bird meat," was his remark, and Hinata stifled a giggle as he watched Kageyama’s sour look. 

"That’s surprising. So you don’t like to eat chicken?" 

"Most birds, actually," Kageyama replied with a sigh. "I tried eating a seagull that had been annoying me once. —Totally horrible, alive _or_ dead. It took me hours to get all of the feathers off, and then its blood was also especially terrible-tasting, not refreshing to drink at all—" 

"Ew! Gross!" 

Kageyama took more kindly to the other foods that Hinata brought; there was a buttered potato, then grilled squid and scallops, and then candy apples. The ningyo tasted every morsel with an unusual gravitas, as if he was savoring each and every bite, and Hinata felt that his own hunger had already been satiated just by observing the literal hunger that prodded Kageyama on to taste, with childlike trust, every new thing that Hinata placed in his hands. 

"I wish I _could_ have taken you to the festival," Hinata found himself saying once, and Kageyama glanced at him from the corner of his eye. 

"It’s fine." Kageyama looked back up at the sky, a smile slowly spreading on his face, and Hinata stared at him, transfixed yet again. "Besides, I thought we agreed that you’d bring it to me instead." 

"Uh huh. You’re right." Hinata smiled. "Should I tell you?" 

"Please." And Kageyama closed his eyes, his face still tilted heavenward, the better to visualize the images that Hinata will paint using words. 

"Well, actually, it started this afternoon. Mom had been called to help out a neighbor to run their stand, and since it’s extra money coming in, she went to help. I had to dress Natsu. You should’ve seen her; she was so cute in a blue yukata—" 

Kageyama listened with the perfect attentiveness, his eyes sometimes flitting open to glance at Hinata and ask him a question. When the question has been answered already, he would close his eyes once more and listen quietly, and when long periods would pass wherein Kageyama did not stop him to ask something, Hinata would almost think that he might have fallen asleep already—and then Kageyama’s dark eyes would slide open once more and Hinata’s breath would catch in his throat, because even the simplest act of his eyes opening seemed like the most sublime sight in the world. 

_Hey, Kageyama Tobio?_

_Maybe…_

_Maybe I wouldn’t mind a hundred years of doing this with you. You know?_

_But also—living forever is so scary. How do you guys manage to do it? Living forever?_

_Maybe this evening won’t end. Maybe tomorrow is never going to come. Maybe—_

_Maybe I don’t have to live a hundred years alone._

_Maybe—_

_Hey, Kageyama. Idiot Kageyama._

_Why is my chest aching so much right now?_

"Hinata?" 

Kageyama was frowning, and Hinata realized with a start that he had already fallen silent a while ago—the quiet between the two of them was achingly soft, and Kageyama was looking over at him, and Hinata stared back, determined not to lose even in this simplest battle of wills. 

"Hinata, why are you—?" 

But instead of finishing his sentence, Kageyama Tobio brought his hand up, and brushed the lonely tear that had apparently made its way down Hinata’s cheek. 

"Eh? What? What? No way…" Hinata smacked Kageyama’s hand away and started to scrub his face furiously with a sleeve, burning red from hair roots to neck. "Why? Eh? What’s happening? I—" 

A single shooting star streaked up through the velvet midnight sky, and ended in a bloom of fiery red and green petals and smoke— it was followed by another, and another, and another, blue and green and red and gold, much like the colors that Hinata had so loved watching on Kageyama’s tail— 

"Y-You’re missing the fireworks, idiot K-Kageyama—" 

Kageyama was still staring at him, dark eyes still slightly widened, his lips parted slightly with an emotion that Hinata couldn’t exactly place. Awe? Surprise? Hinata couldn’t tell— 

Suddenly, he felt overly dizzy, as if he was one of the fire flowers still bursting and flickering into nothingness before and beyond and around them, and he could just blossom into color at any moment— 

Any moment, now— 

"Hey, Kageyama…" 

"What?"

His eyes were the color of the evening ocean, and somehow, Hinata thought, it was so easy to get lost in the depths. 

"Kageyama, I—" 

_I think I can already die happily, right here and right now._

But instead of saying those words of love, Hinata Shouyou leaned forward and closed the silence between the two of them, and suddenly, kissing someone who was half-boy and half-fish didn’t seem like the worst way to spend the last evening of summer, after all. 


	9. everything begins with a story

The morning light was gentle and weak, but the boy could only close his eyes to block out the overwhelming scene of the railroad tracks shining and stretching before him. 

_—The world above the water was composed of nothing but ash, and smoke,_ he reminded himself. 

His right hand was tensed on his bag, and his right foot was nervously tapping on the dull tiled floor of the platform. Earphones were plugged into his ears, playing a pop song that he didn’t particularly care for, and a cap was pulled low over his bright hair. His left hand was shoved in the pocket of his jeans, fingers loosely clasped around his cellphone. 

"…Oh." 

The train would be arriving soon, minutes from now, on schedule as always. 

"It’s already summer, huh?" 

It was just the July of the year 2020, but the boy waiting on the platform felt like he was already a hundred years old. 

* * *

"Yamaguchi, you still remember when the nuclear bomb fell on that place, right?" 

"Yeah. Wasn't it on the morning of August ninth?" 

"That's right. Before the nuclear bomb fell, the air raid sirens reportedly went off twice. And then—there you go." 

Tsukishima Kei pushed his glasses further up his nose and squinted at the outdoor scenery leisurely rolling past the window. They had chosen a seat at the very back of the bus; on the other side of the aisle, a teenaged girl was intently watching some kind of music video playing on her phone. Aside from her, the only other passenger apart from the two junior curators was a lightly snoozing old man seated up front. 

"The numbers vary according to the source, but around forty thousand died from the initial blast, and an additional forty thousand or so died some time later from the aftereffects of nuclear poisoning. The evening before that, apparently, the townspeople had just organized their annual festival dedicated to the local Inari shrine, and just the sheer amount of light material in the site was partly why the fires could have been potentially much more dangerous—that is, if it hadn't rained after the blast." 

"—But some of them survived, right?" 

Yamaguchi's voice was gentle in the gloom of the bus. 

The digital sign on the dashboard beeped and changed; on the speakers, a woman's synthetic voice announced, _"Next stop is in front of Bansuisodo. Bansuisodo. Please press the button to request this stop."_

The girl pressed the button beside her seat, and the synthetic voice added, _"Stop requested. Arriving in—"_

"Yes," Tsukishima finally replied. "Some of them did." 

"What always struck me as ironic was that the bomb was dropped on the ninth due to an inclement weather forecast on the eleventh, but immediately after the blast, it rained anyway." Yamaguchi scratched his chin pensively. "All of the photos taken by the first people on the scene showed just how wet it was _everywhere_. —It certainly helped contain the fires that had been breaking out in the industrial complexes farther down the peninsula, though." 

"Mmhmm." Tsukishima didn't sound especially interested, and Yamaguchi's mouth quirked in a little grin. 

"Always so serious, Tsukki." 

"Well." 

Yamaguchi chuckled lightly, clearly eager to cast around somewhere for a topic. 

"—Wait, I keep forgetting when's your next game. Remind me to come over and watch—I haven't seen you play in so long." 

"No thanks," was the glum reply. "You're almost as bad as my brother when watching one of my games." 

"Okay. I'll look it up in the V.League website later anyway." 

Chortling at his friend's visible annoyance, Yamaguchi turned to look ahead. The stop to Bansuisodo had come and gone—they were alone together at the very back of the bus, now. 

"Hey, remember that time in high school when we were up against Nekoma in nationals when we were first-years and we did that great serve-and-block and you just—" Yamaguchi looked around and mimed a high five with both hands, and Tsukishima grabbed his arm irritably to push it back down. 

"You're embarrassing—" 

"No, yeah, but the fact that I was also able to get the first service ace of the game after that, I was sure that our first ace was gonna be from—" 

_"Next stop is Aoba-dori Ichibancho. Aoba-dori Ichibancho. Please press the button to request this stop."_

"Hey. Maybe real geniuses really _do_ exist in this world," Tsukishima said, "but you're no slouch yourself, Yamaguchi." 

Yamaguchi's grin widened. 

"Thanks, Tsukki." 

The old man requested the next stop, and when the bus finally let him off at the station, Yamaguchi seemed to relax a little more, even as the thought of their ultimate destination still weighed in the back of his mind. 

"I wonder what we'll find there," he mused. 

The light glinted softly off of Tsukishima's rectangular spectacles. Outside, the gently familiar urban scenery of Sendai, City of Trees, never looked so beautiful, and chilling. 

"Hopefully… answers," Tsukishima replied. 

_"Next stop is Aoba-dori Station. Aoba-dori Station. Please press the button to request this stop."_

"That's us," Tsukishima said smoothly, and he pushed the button accordingly. 

* * *

When Tsukishima Kei and Yamaguchi Tadashi were in their first year of high school, someone on their high school volleyball club—a senpai, probably, though he couldn't remember who exactly—had asked them what they wanted to do after graduation, along with the other first- and second-years. 

He remembered noncommittally answering that he was going to college, and Yamaguchi had also answered the same thing. Everyone else had more or less typical answers for their age, all except for one of their first-year wing spikers, who said, completely unironically— 

"I'm going to see the world." 

Everyone else had laughed; Tsukishima was about to razz him for what had been essentially an outrageous statement, but the guy only frowned and refused to say anything more. The senpai who asked the question asked him why not try for the professional leagues given his room for growth, but the guy only replied, doggedly, that he wanted to see the entire world with his own eyes. 

Tsukishima still remembered the guy vaguely, even though it had almost been six years since he had been in high school. It was puzzling, though, to discover that it was much easier to remember the words that that person had spoken instead of his actual face; he had been a good player—not an all-rounder in any sense of the word, though it would still have made perfect sense for him to pursue a career in professional volleyball after he graduated given his love for the sport. But for some reason, he had never really meshed well with the other players in the team and ended up, more often than not, sitting it out as substitute for another wing spiker who was one year level above them. 

When that senpai graduated from the club, the guy was finally able to occupy a regular spot, but for some reason Tsukishima would hate his emotional investment in what was essentially just a club activity that he would ditch after graduation, and even Yamaguchi, who had become captain in their third-year, found it difficult to actually keep him in line. Soon, he ended up as someone who was more voice than face—more like a mirage than anything else. 

_"I'm going to see the world."_

Which was why it was doubly annoying that he had to remember those words for some reason while he walked up the clean, sterile-white hallways of the hospital, both of them still refreshed by the short walk from the train station. Yamaguchi was looking around discreetly, his dark eyes flicking at the signs posted everywhere as if to reassure that they were indeed going in the right direction, and Tsukishima was about to press the elevator button, when the doors slid open and let out some nurses who were quietly talking amongst themselves. 

"Sorry," he muttered when he accidentally bumped into the last passenger, a teenaged boy in a hoodie with deep, tired shadows under his eyes. The latter glared at Tsukishima, his eyes silently screaming _"Watch where you’re going, will you,"_ before finally slouching off to the exit. 

"Kids," Tsukishima growled, and he led Yamaguchi into the elevator and punched at the button for the 6th floor. 

"I _feel_ like I have seen that guy somewhere before," Yamaguchi scowled as the doors slid closed before them. "Er…" 

A sigh. "—Stay focused, Yamaguchi. It’s not important." 

"...Sorry." 

The ivory hallway that opened before their eyes was as featureless and sterile as the ones they had already seen before it, and Yamaguchi bounced a little in his step as the sign pointing to the general direction of room 607 caught his eye. "They do know that we’re visiting today, right?" he said, anxiously, and Tsukishima nodded lightly as he finally stopped before a plain, unmarked white door, with the plate numbered 607 placed on the wall beside it, and the name of the patient printed neatly under the number. 

_Kon, kon._

Tsukishima rapped the door twice with his knuckles, and slid it open. 

"—Sorry for the intrusion." 

The large white room was what Yamaguchi had expected, but the occupant of the bed at one end of the room was not. 

"Did you forget someth— O-Oh! Sorry!" 

The patient was a small, slender girl of around fifteen or sixteen years of age, her face delicate and flushed pink from the apparent embarrassment of having addressed the wrong people. Her dyed blonde hair was neat and short, some of it gathered into a cute ponytail at the side of her head, and her brown eyes were huge and wondering as they wandered between the nervously-smiling Yamaguchi and the tall, sterner Tsukishima. 

"I’m Tsukishima of the Sendai City Museum. This is my colleague, Yamaguchi." Tsukishima’s voice was low and smooth as silk. "We talked before on the phone, Yachi-san." 

"A-Ah, so you’re Tsukishima-san, then. Nice to meet you… And you too, Yamaguchi-san. My name is Yachi. Yachi Hitoka." Realization had dawned on her face, and she finally smiled a little before indicating the chairs set by the wall. "Thank you for being able to come at such a short notice. Please, sit." 

The two curators sat accordingly. Tsukishima was wearing his best poker face; on the other hand, Yamaguchi was clearly struggling to keep silent at the questions that were trying to burst from inside of him. 

"Um… so…" Yachi Hitoka herself seemed unsure where to begin, her hands fidgeting lightly on where they rested on her bed covers. "Actually…" 

"I hope you’re doing okay," Tsukishima interjected, clearly cottoning on that there has to be at least a little small talk before they get to actual business. "I was not a little surprised when you gave me this address." 

"O-Oh, no. I’m doing better now." Yachi shook her head timidly. "It was just that I got into a little accident after I sent you those items, and then your call arrived when I was finally here, so I decided to maybe have this straightened out here instead of waiting until I’m ready to go home. My mom doesn’t like the idea of bringing in unknown guys in the house, see." 

"I see." Tsukishima’s tone was still perfectly clinical and cool. "Is it possible that she may not approve of you sending those items to us as well?" 

"U-Um, I don’t think so. I’m not even sure that she knows those exist. They were hidden in the attic of our house, and I sent it to you guys because they look like they have quite the historical significance…" 

"So is that purely what compelled you to send it to us?" Yamaguchi suddenly asked, softly. 

Yachi’s eyes had widened slightly at the unexpected question from Tsukishima’s partner, but she then relaxed, and smiled sadly. 

"Yes, after a fashion," she said, "but I also sent them to you because I can’t think of a better plan to help out a certain friend of mine." 

"Please help us understand," Tsukishima said, and despite the fact that he had said that he wasn’t interested in anything but the history behind the objects, Yamaguchi can feel his friend’s emotions slowly stirring, even under that cold exterior. 

"I intend to," Yachi said. "Everything begins with a story, and, well—I only hope I can tell it to you as beautifully as he had related it to me…" 

—There was a soft, soft pathos in her voice that made Yamaguchi’s heart tremble slightly. 

"It all began… with one of Hinata Shouyou’s clearest memories." 

* * *

"Quick! Quick! Hinata-kun! Don’t stop to look back!" 

BOOM. BOOM. 

_I’m not dying here._

_"If I go away to the sea, I shall return a—"_

"I’ll be careful, Mom! I promise…"

 _"—A creature of the sea, half-human and half-fish—"_

"N—ngh… nee-san—" 

"I challenge you!" 

"You’re on, dumbass." 

"If I win— Tell me your name." 

BOOM. BOOM. 

"—Hey, Kageyama. —Next week, do you wanna go to the festival with me?" 

"What—the fuck—was _that_?" 

"Tell me, Hinata. Was it really as good as the stories say? —My blood?"

"What have I done—?" 

"You’re somewhat of an immortal, aint’cha?" 

"But I’m perfectly human." 

_Once upon a time, there lived a farmer, and he had a beautiful wife, and three sons._

"I’m starving, dumbass. What took you so long?" 

"Y-You’re missing the fireworks, idiot K-Kageyama—" 

BOOM. BOOM.— 

[ **I think I can already die happily, right here and right now.** ]

* * *

—The world above the water was composed of nothing but ash, and smoke. 

This was what Hinata Shouyou regularly discovered and rediscovered during the sixteenth year of his life as he opened his eyes, and realized that once more, his eyelashes were heavy with tears from some strange dream. 

Above him, there was nothing but the clear pale blue stretch of summer sky, and distinctly, he could somehow hear the ubiquitous sound of the waves. Frowning at this unexpected environment that he found himself waking up in, he slowly raised himself up on one elbow, and observed an equally strange sight on the sand, just a little distance from himself. 

Kageyama Tobio’s chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm as he slumbered, his smooth brow free from bad dreams. His arms were spread out naturally on either side of him, and the way his long mother-of-pearl sleeves extended on the sand reminded one of birds’ wings. The single pearl he wore gleamed resplendently on the dark gloss of his hair, and Hinata smiled softly as he crawled over and gently pushed the stray strands out of Kageyama’s face. 

The ningyo looked even more boyish like this, he mused. Not like a mythical creature at all. If he didn’t turn his head and pay attention to the dryly-glittering black fishtail that extended over the sand, he could almost fool himself into thinking that Kageyama was just a normal boy, that he, Hinata, was just— 

RRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. 

The unwelcome, shrill caterwauling of the sirens from the direction of town startled him from his reverie, and he shot up, all other thoughts driven from his head. 

RRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. 

His breaths came in shallow, ragged breaths. Somewhere below him, he could feel Kageyama also start to stir from this new disturbance— 

_Mom and... Natsu._

"Sorry. Kageyama, I have to— the planes— they’re here—" 

"Hinata!" There was a new timbre in Kageyama’s voice that he hadn’t heard before, and Hinata had to glance over his shoulder to realize that the expression on Kageyama’s face was— 

—A cold hand grabbed him by the ankle, and he was instantly angry at this unexpected impediment from his best friend. Why can’t he understand that he has to go—that Natsu would probably be shaking and crying right now without her big brother to comfort her, that Mom would realize that— 

"Let go! Kageyama, you bastard, _let me—!_ " 

"NO!" Kageyama was bellowing, and despite himself, Hinata could appreciate the sudden fear creeping in the ningyo’s voice, and it was almost as if the ocean itself was reflecting Kageyama’s mounting terror at the situation, because the very waves themselves seemed to have shrunk back from the shore— 

"But—" 

"Can’t you feel it?" Kageyama said, breathlessly, lip trembling and hand still firmly grasping Hinata, "That way… that way is _death_ —even for you—" 

"Argh! Don’t you think I know _that_?" 

Hinata tried pulling himself out of Kageyama’s grasp, and instead lost his balance and fell on his face in the sand. The ningyo stubbornly held on, even as the boy started kicking at him with his free foot— 

"Ow! Stop that, Hinata, you big mor—" 

"Let go of me! _Kageyama!_ " 

—Kageyama managed to grab ahold of Hinata’s other leg, and with a shout, Hinata desperately dug his hands into the sand— 

"—Nii-chan! Tobio!" 

The two scuffling boys froze to watch in wonderment as Hinata Natsu wriggled through the crevice, her wild hair slowly escaping from neat pigtails, and ran up to them. 

"Don’t fight!" she was screaming at the two of them, her round face scrunched up, as though she were about to cry. "Nii-chan! Let’s go hide—let’s—" 

Hinata finally managed to disentangle himself from Kageyama to embrace Natsu, shaking slightly and crying, over and over— 

"Brave, stupid Natsu! Brave, stupid Natsu!" 

"Why are you—" Kageyama was about to ask, when all three of them heard it— 

The droning of engines, from fifty thousand feet in the air. 

"—No. _No._ " 

—The foreign planes from beyond the sea flew over their heads, like so many huge crows. 

It was as if all the blood had just drained from Hinata’s face. 

"Oi— dumbass—" 

"Look after Natsu! I beg you!" Hinata was already thrusting a confused Natsu into Kageyama’s arms, and the moment of hesitation that the ningyo had at this turn of events allowed the boy to pull away, his bright hair whipping wildly against the wind. "I’ll be back, Natsu! I just need to get Mom away—" 

" _HINATA!_ " 

But Kageyama’s cry was already lost to the wind; Hinata had scrambled through the hole in the rock, and what rang in his ears in the silence was Natsu’s wailing as she finally realized that they had been the ones left behind— 

* * *

_To you, seventy years in the future._

_Here is how my world ends, and this story starts._

_█████████ ████ █████████ █████████ ████ ████████_

_It ends with a single flash of light, and the sound of Kageyama Tobio’s wordless scream in my ear._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the story so far! 
> 
> Please feel free to leave kudos and comments, as they greatly encourage me through this work. 
> 
> See you in the next one!


End file.
